Tell Me a Truth: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance

by Coralee June

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  That’s what I had told him right? This had to be nothing.

  Something was creeping up on me.

  “I’m going to be working late to grade papers,” he rushed out. It sounded eerily like an excuse. Pussy. I stared deeply into his dark eyes, then trailed lower to take in the maroon tie wrapped haphazardly around his neck and the strain of his jacket. There was a single bead of sweat collected on his upper lip that I wanted to taste.

  “Are you avoiding me, Decker Harris?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.” Simple. Truthful. To the point. I could appreciate his honesty. It’s what we should do, right? Avoid one another and pretend the fireworks sparking between us wouldn’t catch the lawn on fire.

  I got off the desk and ran my fingers through my hair before heading to the door of his classroom, my hand hitting the handle as the bell rang. “See you tonight, Mr. Harris,” I replied with a grin. My voice was breathy as I looked at him over my shoulder. Stealing one last look at his broody face, I then headed out into the hallway, not sure why I was tempting something that seemed impossible and inevitable all at once.

  I could have sworn I heard his whisper, see you tonight, even though I’d left him back in his classroom.

  I was losing my motherfucking mind.

  15

  Decker

  I was making my favorite dish, pulling out all the stops with homemade pasta and spaghetti sauce an Italian ex taught me during a summer in New York. I didn’t pull out the paper plates, either. I had to remind myself not to open a bottle of wine because my…dinner companion…was underaged.

  I did light a candle though.

  I was insane. Fucking insane.

  She had a short shift at Huck-a-poos after school, and for all I knew, she’d already eaten. But still I stood there, sweating over a pot of my signature date night dish. I’d made this countless times for countless women. It was the one thing I’d perfected and used to impress people.

  I could feel Lance’s speculative stare on my back. He might be in Louisiana for the night, but that didn’t mean his presence wasn’t here. I saw his warning glare beating down my back every time my eyes flickered to the shut door of his bedroom. Bad. This was very, very bad.

  The worst part of all of it? She knew I’d show up. Blakely knew I’d be eagerly waiting for some alone time with her. I thought I was the one seeking to figure her out, but she was the one that could read me like a book. She was under my skin.

  Under my motherfucking skin.

  The door to the loft opened, and I held my breath like a fucking pussy. She walked in, her hair a sweaty mess from the Memphis humidity. The makeup lining her bright green eyes was smeared and smoky as she bit her lip and breathed in the smell of dinner. She turned to look at me, like she already knew I’d be there—like she already knew I’d be standing here with my dick metaphorically in my hand, staring in awe of her flustered beauty.

  “Hey, Mr. Harris.” I wanted to slap that verbal dissonance between us and demand she call me Decker, mostly because I loved the sound of those harsh syllables on her tongue. I used to think that I had control over my life, but I was starting to think that it’s safer to sit back and watch Blakely obliterate my ideas about restraint. She was more beautiful to look at than the fine lines of my perfect life, anyway.

  “Hello, Miss Stewart,” I replied, calling her on her own game. Though my plan had backfired. She thought I didn’t notice the slight tremor in her bones every time I called her by her name, but I did. “Hungry?” I asked, though the food wasn’t exactly on my mind. Fuck.

  Nothing, that’s what she’d said. Nothing I’d be.

  Tomorrow, I’d be nothing. Tonight I wanted a taste of something.

  “It smells delicious,” she noted before plopping her thousand dollar messenger bag on the floor and heading toward me in that tight little work uniform I equally loathed and adored. I loved that she didn’t care about the lavish gifts Lance kept tossing her way. She probably didn’t even know that bag hadn’t even been released to the general public yet. Lance was always about the finer things, not me.

  “I made my special spaghetti,” I boasted, feeling ridiculous for feeling proud about something I shouldn’t be doing.

  “Let me go change out of this outfit, then I’ll help you set the table,” she offered before disappearing into her bedroom. I tried. I really did. I tried not to imagine her slipping out of her sweaty shirt and shrugging those tight, denim mini shorts off her rounded thighs and leaving them in a pile of torment on the floor.

  But I did.

  No regrets.

  She appeared again, looking fresh with a bare face and bright eyes, wearing an oversized shirt and leggings in the most effortless, casual outfit possible. It made my suit look out of place, and I suddenly feared that she would think I was trying too hard for something she wanted to be nothing. Nothing was such bullshit.

  “I’ll go change, too. Tired of this stuffy suit,” I blurted out before passing her, our arms brushing. My chest constricted. My heart did that ridiculous thump, thump, thump that had me questioning the different forms of addiction. If people could make you high, then touching Blakely was like a drug.

  I stripped quickly and awkwardly, fumbling through my clothes for something that felt as effortless as her outfit. I settled on jeans and a t-shirt.

  When I got back into the kitchen, Blakely had set the table and was humming to herself, shaking her hips as she lifted the spoon and took a taste of the spaghetti sauce. Her face looked squeamish. Shit. Did she not like the sauce?

  “Not a fan of spaghetti?” I asked, sweat coating my back.

  She blushed before spinning fully to face me, those green, needy eyes trailing my body. “Nope, it’s perfect,” she lied. I could see the lie on her face, like a beacon demanding me to make it better or figure her out.

  “What’s wrong with the sauce, Miss Stewart?” I asked. She sneezed.

  “I have a very minor garlic allergy,” she replied with a shrug. Fuck. Of course she did. My dish was swimming in something that could kill her. There was a metaphor swimming behind her kind eyes somewhere.

  “Do you need an EpiPen?” I asked. How much garlic could kill her?

  “One taste won’t do too much damage. But I should probably take some Benadryl. I can make myself a sandwich?” she offered. I didn’t want to be another person in her life she had to overcompensate for—rearrange her life and tastes and preferences for. She had enough of that with her mother.

  “How about I order us some take out?” I asked before strutting over to the table to toss the meal I painstakingly prepared. It seemed fitting that the dish I used so many times to swoon love interests wouldn’t be fit for Blakely. Everything with her was different.

  “Don’t waste it! You can eat your spaghetti,” she laughed.

  “I’ll save it for lunch tomorrow,” I promised before taking it to the counter and grabbing my phone. She watched as I scrolled through different restaurants before deciding on one.

  “Hey,” she said before opening the fridge. “A sandwich actually sounds perfect. What do you want on yours?” she asked before bending down to grab the lunchmeat and cheese. She looked so unapologetically angelic.

  “Whatever’s on yours,” I replied.

  We ate on the couch. She sat cross-legged with mustard on the corner of her lip, practically begging me to lick it off her perfect mouth, which was running a mile a minute. “You can’t honestly believe that the Drake Equation Science Theory is accurate,” she joked before tossing a napkin to the side and scooting closer to me. “It’s a meaningless guesstimate with no proof!”

  “Most scientific theories start out as guesstimates,” I argued. I didn’t actually believe in the theory, but watching her argue with me over science was getting me hard.

  “So you’re saying this theory accurately predicts the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way? Ridiculous!”

  “It’s not i
ntended to be an exact number, just an approximation,” I argued.

  “Dr. Frank Drake pulled numbers out of his ass. There’s no way to know for sure! He shared it just to be controversial. Most of its factors are unknown.”

  I laughed as she rolled her eyes, those green orbs swimming in mirth. “Fine. But you have to admit there’s life out there. We’re not alone. It’s nice to find an explanation in something that doesn’t make sense to us,” I offered while wondering if there was a theory to explain why my chest felt like a cage barely containing my heart.

  “Of course there’s life out there. I just think it’s limiting to slap a theory on it and pretend we understand it all. Maybe I should be an astronaut.”

  “Giving up on being a doctor already?” I asked. That career path didn’t seem to fit her personality. Doctors were stiff and selfless. She’d been giving all her life; maybe it was time to be a little selfish and discover something for her own peace of mind.

  “The human body disgusts me. Maximillian showed me a YouTube video of a septal myectomy, and I about puked. Have you ever seen the surgery for unclogging the congealed muscles of the heart? Gross. Pass.”

  I laughed. I had in fact seen that particular surgery and found it interesting. “You didn’t think it was cool that they have to perform it on a motionless heart?”

  “No. It freaked me out!” she exclaimed with a cringe. I wanted to dance over the conversation about Maxifuckingmillian but didn’t.

  “There are lots of types of medicine. You don’t have to be a surgeon,” I offered, though I knew she didn’t want to be a doctor.

  “Nope. Vomit, mucus, and pus aren’t my thing. Plus, I’m not much of a people person, and that job requires lots and lots of people in vulnerable states with sometimes volatile attitudes. I’m still searching for my career path. I kind of hate that MAMS wants you to know what you want to be when you grow up right away,” she added before settling deeper into the couch and sprawling her legs out. The tips of her toes brushed against my thigh, and I had to hiss out a breath like a fucking pussy.

  “We put a lot of pressure on people to know the plans they have for the future,” I agreed.

  “When did you know you wanted to be a teacher?”

  “When I learned that school was a good escape from my father. My test scores didn’t care that he had a billion dollar advertisement deal or that he could catch a football. You either knew the information or you didn’t. There’s power in that.”

  She stared at me in awe for a moment, and I knew it had nothing to do with my father’s lucrative career. She liked the subtle truth I placed at her feet like a bloody offering, and she was soaking in the magic of it.

  “I feel the same way, for different reasons, of course. My mother was known around town as a loser—an idiot. I guess I wanted to break the mold and be smarter than her. She used to brag that I didn’t get any of her looks, used to claim she was prettier than me. I never much liked the idea of bragging about something so fleeting, so I made sure to be smart. Smarter than her. Smarter than that damn town, too.”

  I put down my barely-eaten sandwich on the coffee table to approach her, hovering my body over her waist as I precariously ran a finger over her wrist. Only her wrist. Anymore and I’d not be able to stop. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered. “You shine like the whole universe is right there at your fingertips.”

  She let out a shaky breath before shaking her head as I snapped back, increasing the distance between us. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments,” she whispered.

  “I don’t like fishing. It’s boring,” I replied.

  She got up from her comfortable spot on the couch and started cleaning up after us, the anxious energy within her was blooming like a Venus fly trap, ready to snap at the first fly that came its way. “I’ll get that,” I offered before following her into the kitchen. Her shaky hands wiped down the countertops, smearing the spaghetti sauce I’d splattered in the process. I reached out to grab her wrist. “I got it,” I whispered before pulling her close. We stood there like statues, poised in the nothingness of our promise while aching to leap into something. Or maybe that was just me.

  I leaned forward. “Nothing. This is nothing,” I promised before brushing my lips against hers. It was supposed to be fleeting, like the beauty she wasn’t interested in. Just a brief inhale. Just a slight taste.

  It was catastrophic.

  She bit my lip, tangling her tongue with mine in ecstasy as her frayed hair hit my cheeks. We moaned into each other’s mouths, spilling our truths with guttural sounds. “Nothing,” she promised before slipping her fingers under my shirt and pulling it up.

  “Nothing,” I promised while doing the same to her tattered clothes. The soft cotton fell like raindrops on the floor of Lance’s loft, long forgotten the moment I saw her bared to me. I wanted to embrace the contact between our heated skin, feel her pulse pound against mine. I wanted to feel her life burrow under my skin.

  I kissed her neck. Devouring her creamy skin with my tongue, and my palate burst with salt and the smell of her citrus body wash. Her fingers clawed at my back in long, slow drags that I knew would leave marks not nearly permanent enough for the feelings I had for this woman. I cupped her neck, holding her soft body in place while guiding her to the counter. I was clumsy while lifting her up to sit, those long flailing legs like curling leaves in a fire as I settled her.

  “Can this be nothing, too?” I asked before tugging her bra down and palming her breast.

  “Y-yes,” she promised. I leaned down and flicked my tongue out to tease her pebbled peak. Her back arched. My body convulsed. Every nerve ending in my body was hers to command. My brain was saying, kiss her deeper, you fool. But my brotherly heart, the one that had a lifetime with Lance, was begging me to stop. It knew it would eventually belong to her. It was always meant to. I was up against the inevitable, but I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  She pulled at my hair, yanking me back to bare my lips to hers. I kept my eyes open, not wanting to miss a single expression on her angelic face. She sank her teeth into my lips, pulling at the skin like she could chew it off. Her hands trailed over my abs before resting on the waistband of my pants. The tip of her index finger sunk beneath my clothes. Just a little more, and she’d touch me.

  “Don’t,” I gritted as her hand moved lower.

  “Why not?” she asked in a coy tone while ignoring my plea. Her hand was cold as it wrapped around my cock. I felt her thumb testing my head, smearing precum over the tip. My body jolted. She smiled against my lips.

  “Can I stroke you?” she asked. I wanted it, I really did. But recklessness like this required limits.

  “Yes,” I relented.

  Her curled palm ran up and down my length slowly, as if she knew I’d push her away the moment we hit my invisible boundary. I refused to come in my pants from her touch. Up and down. Up and down. Shivers erupted through my body, and I kissed her harder, showing her with my mouth everything I wanted to do but wouldn’t.

  “Stop,” I gasped when I felt the rising blood flow begging to release. Her pout was palpable. I ate it up to ease the sting. I deserved blue balls. It would remind me later, when the guilt and shame were too much to swallow, that I still had a semblance of restraint.

  “Touch me,” she begged while spreading those legging-covered legs apart. My hands trailed down her tight stomach. Slowly, ever so slowly. My palm cupped her heat as she whimpered.

  “Like this?” I asked.

  “Fuck yes,” she moaned on an exhale as I started rubbing her through the tight, thin material. That friction was needy and wanton, begging for her release. I knew that her slick heat was just barriers away, but didn’t trust myself to feel how hot and wet she was for me.

  Nothing would ever be enough.

  Faster and faster I moved. Kissing. Nipping. Flicking. Palming. Fucking with hands and mouths and secrets I didn’t want to share. “Decker,” she rasped. I moved faster. Stroking her tongue in time
to the movements of my hand, dragging her heat along on my skin while begging for the branding of her orgasm. I wanted to feel her fully. Dive my cock so deep inside of her she never thought of anyone else ever again.

  She fell apart so beautifully. Like a sigh and a scream. Like the splitting of an atom, building entire civilizations while yanking me out of my element.

  But the first words to escape her lips after made me grow cold. “That was something, Mr. Harris.”

  Something indeed.

  Out of nowhere, my phone rang. My heart raced as I picked it up from the countertop. The moment I saw Lance’s name on the caller ID, my body hit a wall. “It’s Lance,” I whispered while arguing with myself whether or not I should answer it.

  “Right,” Blakely said before hopping off of the counter and increasing the space between us. It was like someone snipped the tether between our bodies, leaving me to bleed out. I hated the tremble on her lips and the shrill ringing on my phone. I couldn’t be accountable to Lance. Something within me feared that he would know. He would hear the betrayal in my voice.

  The phone stopped ringing, and we stared at one another. There was a dare in her wide stance. Those slender arms crossed at her chest were beating me down with the unspoken words buried deep there.

  “We shouldn’t have done that,” I finally whispered.

  16

  Blakely

  Decker left for work at four a.m. I know this because I was wide awake, buzzing with regret and an ache I couldn’t quite place. I heard him when the shower kicked on and the subtle slam of our front door, letting me know just how he felt about our little slip up last night.

  It wasn’t a little slip up. It was a major fuck up. A divine gift.

  Not five minutes after my crashing orgasm, he was scrambling for his shirt and cursing himself. “We shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered. The rational part of me knew this. I was analyzing the scene from all angles, regret pooling between my thighs like the orgasm he rocked through me.