by Tracey Ward
“Was it just them or…” He let the question hang but I knew what he wasn’t asking.
“Laney is out for the night. Party.”
“You’re here alone?”
I turned around, surprised by his tone. It sounded nervous? Maybe uncomfortable.
“Yep, just me.”
“You should have had the alarm system on.”
“The door was locked.”
“I know, I used my key. But you’ve got the alarm system. You should use it.”
I shrugged. “I’ll turn it on when I go to bed.”
“You should have it on whenever you’re alone in the house.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Alright, Kel, geez. Do you want me to turn it on now?”
“Just promise me you’ll turn it on when I leave.”
“Are you leaving already?” I asked, feeling my heart hurt. I hadn’t seen him in months and despite being scared shitless when he showed up, I was excited to have him here. Also, I’d been alone in the house for a couple days. I could use the company.
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing toward the kitchen door. It reminded me of the day I met him when he was watching for my dad, nervous about getting social with his lawyer’s daughter.
“Don’t be stupid. You drove all the way down here. Sit down. Have a cookie.”
“What kind are they? Chocolate chip?”
I sighed heavily. “You don’t like chocolate chip.”
“Everyone likes chocolate chip.”
“Everyone but you. You think they’re too sweet. Here, have a peanut butter crisscross.”
He stood on the opposite side of the island from me and bit down into a cookie. His eyes went wide.
“What is that?” he asked.
“A cookie. You like it don’t you? You’re welcome, although you’ll forget you like it by tomorrow and think chocolate chip is the only cookie on the planet.” I bit into a cookie as well, talking around the delicious dissolving in my mouth. “You have a terrible food memory.”
“Food memory isn’t a real thing and that’s not what I’m talking about.” He came around the island, his eyes intent on me. Not on my face, but on my chest. I suddenly realized I was only wearing a workout halter top. My pseudo tattoo was barely covered at all. “Did you get a tattoo?”
Before I could answer his fingers were gently pushing aside the material of my shirt. He exposed the top of my right breast to a dangerous degree but I don’t think he realized it. I on the other hand, was breathlessly, heart-stoppingly aware of it. And of his fingers lightly running over my skin.
“It’s just a drawing,” I said quietly, watching his face. “It was practice for the one I want to get.”
“I didn’t know you wanted one.”
His voice was so deep. He was close. Warm and tall and so close.
I nodded slightly. “I’m surprised you don’t have any.”
“I’ve never had the money lying around to get one. Every extra penny has always been spent on boxing.”
He was talking but I don’t know that he was paying attention to what he was saying. His fingers were moving over the lines on my skin, tracing the entire image. I wouldn’t need the ink after this. His fingers were burning me, leaving feint scars in their wake.
His eyes finally found mine though his hand didn’t leave me. “Why a compass?”
I swallowed hard. “So I remember to trust myself. That no one knows me better than me.”
“So you remember to follow your own path.”
“Yeah.”
Kellen grinned as he dropped his hand and took a step back. “You’re an old soul, Jenna. You’re too together for your age. You’ve got too much figured out already.”
I chuckled shakily, feeling off balance. “Tell that to my mom.”
“I’m guessing they don’t know about this,” he said, pointing the compass.
“No. Or about college.”
His face fell. “You’re not thinking about skipping out on college, are you?”
“No, I’m going. But they don’t know where I’m going to go or what I’m going to study. Mom thinks I’m going to be a business major.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Art. I want to study art.”
I moved out of the kitchen to the adjacent dining room where I grabbed my sketchpad. When I brought it back to the island and set it down beside him, my hands were trembling. Sam knew. So did Bryce, my boss, but this was different. This was Kellen. This was like telling family and I was so afraid but I was also rushing. I felt like I couldn’t stop myself. Like it was going to burst out of me whether I wanted it to or not.
I flipped my pad open to the page Bryce and I had worked on, the one where he had shown me different shading techniques and how to adjust my drawings to become better tattoos.
“This is what I want to do,” I said breathily. I felt like I had run a marathon, not to the dining room and back. I couldn’t catch my breath. “I got a job at a tattoo parlor in Bakersfield. I’m going to work there on weekends this year then hopefully he’ll give me an apprenticeship while I go to college. Then I’ll get certified and I’ll do it on my own. Maybe I’ll work there or somewhere else. Someday I want my own shop, but for now this is what I have to do.”
“This is what you want to do.”
I grinned. It felt wild, crazy. “Same thing.”
Kellen smiled at me before looking down at my sketchpad. He flipped through it the way Bryce had. Slowly. He was looking, really, honestly looking at each drawing. I felt exposed. I felt more vulnerable and naked with him passing his eyes over my drawings than I would if I was standing in front of him bare skinned from head to toe.
“What do you think?” I asked quietly.
He looked up, his face surprised. “What do I think about you becoming an artist?”
“Yeah.”
“I think it’s what you were meant to do. I’ve always said you’re talented, Jen. I’m glad you’re going to do something great with it.”
“You think me becoming a tattoo artist is great?”
“If that’s what you want, then hell yes. This,” he pointed to the compass on my chest, “is something you designed isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Bryce, the guy at the shop, he helped me fix it but yeah, I designed it.”
“It’s perfect.” He turned to face me, his dark eyes serious. He stepped close and pressed his hands on the side of my face so I was looking at him. So I couldn’t look away. “You’re perfect, Nonpareil.”
I smiled as my eyes filled with tears of relief. I pushed his hands away so I could wrap my arms around his neck and hug him tightly. He didn’t hesitate to hug me back. It felt so good to have him here again. I knew I’d missed him but standing here with him like this, having him around to tell my secret to, that was excruciatingly sublime.
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered, pressing my face into his shoulder.
He hugged me tighter. “Me too.”
We stood there holding each other for a long time. Too long. Longer than propriety or my mom would allow. Longer than friendship considered acceptable. We held each other until the song on the sound system changed and the air around us shifted. Until the way his body felt against mine became different. It was warmer. Softer. Stronger. The rough stubble of his five o’clock shadow scraped against my cheek as he pulled his head back to look at me with serious eyes. But he didn’t let go.
I felt like I was falling inside. Like the floor had dropped out and Kellen was the only thing holding me up anymore. I stared into his eyes as he searched mine and I saw what I was feeling written all over his face. It was utterly unlike the way we’d ever seen each other before. He looked different. He looked darker, more mysterious. Older.
Before his head dipped down to close the short distance to mine, I knew. His hand had shifted slightly sending his fingertips up under the hem of my shirt and onto the skin of my lower back. I died a little then. With just that one touch I was done
for. I was ruined the way his smile had ruined me four years ago. He had stolen my heart that day with that simple gesture and now the touch of his calloused fingers locked my body away as his forever. Other men would touch it. Other men would roam their hands over it and when I’d sigh they’d think that made it theirs, but it wasn’t. It never would be. They would be thieves stealing from a man who had laid claim to me on this night when my heart, my head and my body aligned to follow the same star. To guide me North.
His mouth touched mine gently once.
It was a test. Like asking permission.
I rose up on the balls of my feet, easily closing the distance between us. This time he didn’t retreat. He kissed me soundly as his hands tightened on my back. His hips met mine hard until I was pinned against him from head to toe. Then his tongue swept across my lips and I sighed, letting him in. Letting him have all of me without a fight or thought. It didn’t matter. He could take it all, every last breath in my body. It wouldn’t change anything.
I was already his.
He gripped my hips and lifted me onto the island, his mouth never leaving mine. I opened my legs for him and he stepped into me, pulling me to the edge of the counter until my body was flush with his. Until I could feel him hard against me, the rough feel of his jeans grating through the thin material of my yoga pants. He slowed down then. His lips trailed over the edge of my mouth, down my chin to the long column of my neck. I let my head fall back as his tongue slid across my skin, as his lips dotted my neck with hot, breathy kisses.
I wove my hands into his hair. He guided his up inside my shirt, skirting them over my sides. His thumbs slid slowly over my stomach and I took a shuddering breath. But when they rose higher he hesitated.
I couldn’t stand it. The wild feeling I’d felt when I showed him my sketches was still with me. I was off kilter, falling hard and I refused to pull my chute. I would crash and it would hurt but it would be one hell of a ride.
I pulled on his hair until his face was level with mine again. I kissed him hard. I pushed my tongue into his mouth. I wrapped my legs around his waist and I clung to him with everything I had.
When his hands continued higher, when his thumbs brushed over my bare breasts beneath my shirt, I whimpered into his mouth. He took hold of me more firmly, cupping me in his hot palms and squeezing as he pushed his erection harder against my core. The friction made me moan, it made me dizzy and I bit down on his bottom lip, sucking the soft tissue into my mouth. His breath shot out sharply, hot against my face.
He cupped me, palmed me, squeezed and tugged gently at the hard peaks of my nipples straining against his skin. My breasts were small in his huge hands but he took every inch of them, every scorched nerve that begged for more. He was gentle but eager, insistent and intense.
I slid my hands down his body, following the impossible ripples of hard muscle and soft skin that made up the man devouring me. I moved down his arms, brushed over his chest, skimmed over his stomach and came rest on his belt buckle.
We both froze. His hands held me, his mouth hovered over mine, but we paused. He breathed into my mouth, I breathed out into his and we kept each other alive in those halted seconds. Then I moved my hand lower, pressing my palm over the top of his bulge, and he groaned. His head fell forward against my shoulder as his breathing went ragged. He gripped my body hard, his hands falling to my hips and leaving my breasts cold and wanting.
I wasn’t breathing anymore. I was seeing stars but I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t get air and I couldn’t get enough of him. I wanted everything.
I tugged at the front of his pants, pulled the waist from his skin, and slid my palm inside. I felt him through his underwear. Just a thin piece of cotton keeping his heat from mine. I’d never felt a guy like this. I had no idea what to expect and then he jerked against my palm, so hot and so hard. I had to close my eyes against the overwhelming feeling that gave me. The burn it built in my belly that would kill me if it wasn’t quenched.
Suddenly he jerked away.
“Jenna,” he moaned shaking his head.
“What?” I whispered, stunned. My hand ached where his belt had wrenched across it as he pulled away. As he left me.
“Shit. We can’t. I can’t do this.”
“Why?”
He sighed. “You’re only seventeen.”
That was not the answer I expected. I was waiting for ‘We can’t do this to Laney’ or ‘You’re my friend and I don’t see you that way’. I was not ready for ‘You’re just a kid’.
I went from breathless to pissed in a heartbeat.
“Seriously? That’s why? You’re only twenty-one!”
“Why are you yelling at me? I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
“I’m yelling because you’re being an asshole.”
His eyes sparked. “How am I being an asshole? I put a stop to it. Do you know how hard that was?”
“Yes! Because I couldn’t do it. I wanted it. I still do!”
He ran his hands over his face roughly, growling. Literally, honestly growling. “You have no idea…”
“No idea what?”
“Nothing. I should go.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, checking the time. “I’ll head back to my apartment tonight. I shouldn’t have come.”
I snatched his phone out of his hand. He glared up at me where I still sat on the island.
“No way,” I told him. “You think I don’t know you? You’ll run, this will be some weird thing between us and you’ll avoid talking to me. Then what? We’re not friends anymore because of one kiss? That’s fine for you and your randoms at school, but that shit’s not happening to us.”
“What do you want from me, Jenna?” he snapped.
“I want you to talk to me about this.”
He shook his head, frustrated. “I’m not good at that.”
“Not with other girls but this is me. You’ve always been able to talk to me.”
“That’s the fucking problem!” he shouted, making me sit back in surprise at his sudden anger. “It’s you. How could I do this with you? This isn’t how we are. I don’t have a clue how to be this with you!”
“Be what?”
He turned around, pacing the room like a tiger. He was breathing heavily, shooting air harshly out of his nose and I recognized it from when he was preparing to go into the ring. When he was getting ready to knock a guy on his ass.
“Thirteen, Jenna,” he ranted. “You were thirteen when I met you. Just a kid. But you’re not anymore. Now you’re… you’re not anymore and I look at you and I—“
“You what? Kel, look at me!” I demanded, not putting up with his shit. He stopped his pacing, brought his eyes to mine. They were tense and angry. He looked caged. “You what?”
“And I want you. I have for years.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. “Years?”
“Since you were fifteen and that asshole put his hands on you. I kept thinking you were just a kid and I flipped out. Laney said I was being a psycho. She reminded me that you were almost the same age she was when we first fooled around like that and it blew my mind. You were growing up and I had been ignoring it. Then I came and apologized in your room and you knelt in front of me on your bed with your big beautiful eyes begging me and your body right there at my fingertips and I saw it.” He closed his eyes and fell back against the counter across from me, his arms crossed over his chest. When he looked at me again, he looked tired. “You were a woman and I’ve been fighting with that ever since.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
I slid off the island and came to stand right in front of him. He looked at me warily but he didn’t move away.
“Why are you fighting it?”
He breathed in deeply, his arms rising and falling with his chest. “I don’t know.”
I shook my head, refusing to let him shut down on me.
“Yeah, you do. You’re not dumb, Kel. You know exactly how you fe
el and why.” I reached up and laid my hands lightly on his arms where they crossed over his chest. “Don’t treat me like I’m one of them.”
“One of who?” he asked, his voice rough.
“One of the girls you look beautiful for. That you let touch you and feel some sick thrill from being with the bad boy. The boxer from the wrong side of town. The ones that love your body and your eyes and your bike but have no idea who you are because you’ll give them everything they want in a hundred different ways, but you’ll never give them you.”
His jaw clenched as his eyes burned into mine. This was his defense with people, especially women. He shut down. He hid from them but he gave them his body and made them ache in theirs to distract them from the fact that he wasn’t there. That they were alone and they never even knew it.
“I don’t want that with you,” he said tightly.
I chuckled darkly. “I don’t want that either. So don’t do that to me. Talk to me. Tell me why.”
“I just did. I don’t want that with you.”
“You don’t want to shut down on me.”
“If we have sex, I will. I can’t do both. I don’t know any other way.”
“It could be different with me.”
He snorted. “People don’t change, Jen. I am who I am. I’ll do it. I’ll fuck it up, I always do and I don’t really mind. But not with you. I’ll lose you and I can’t do that.”
I felt my heart breaking. I willed myself not to cry but the tears swelled in my eyes.
“You haven’t walked away from Laney,” I pointed out feeling spiteful, desperate and somehow hopeful.
He lifted his arms from under my hands took hold of them, let them dangle between us.
“Yes, I have. With her it’s all sex.”
“You told her you loved her.”
He flinched. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t feel it.”
“You told me you loved me once,” I whispered, hating how pathetic I sounded. How very small and frail.
“And I meant that. I still do. I love you, Jen, but you’ve never needed me to be in love with you. It’s different somehow. Look, you don’t want what Laney and I have. Half the time I don’t even want it but it’s the best I can manage. You deserve so much more than that.”