Page 64 of Leah

I mulled his words over in thought. “But…you’ve always been like that, Carter. You just said yourself last night that girls like Molly are fun and—”

“Yeah, they’re fun to pass the time when the alternative is drowning in the loneliness.”

“You, lonely?” I looked at him doubtfully. How could a rockstar be lonely?

His eyes looked raw as he nodded once, telling me, “Yeah, Leah, lonely.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment as I gazed at him.

He looked away and let out a slow breath, telling me slowly, “My point about Molly was that we had a… fling. Hardly anything happened, really, and that’s usually what it is for me.When I get lonely, I like to have a girl, someone I’m familiar with to keep me company. It’s not sexual, Leah. I can’t describe it…I itch for familiarity. I…long for…” His throat bobbed as another emotion flickered through his eyes. “To put it simply, I don’t take strangers to bed.”

“Never?” I prodded gently.

“Nope. Not since Pomposa, but even then I kind of knew her.”

Despite the tender moment, I burst out laughing. “Stupid Pomposa.”

His mouth came to my ear, and my body seized when his hot breaths hit the side of my face. “You can call her stupid all you want, but without her riling you up and making you question what it feels like to kiss, we’d probably never have hadourfirst kiss.”

I bit my lip on a smile. “That’s true.”

“Was it a good kiss? I always wanted to ask you that.”

I turned my head to him, and we were hardly inches apart. “It was the best, Carter.”

Even though there was that edge of melancholy, his face brightened. “You drove me crazy back then. Fucked with my head every single day.”

“You never showed it.”

“I know. I was always trying to hide everything from you. You were my friend, and I didn’t want to ruin that.”

Friend.

“I hate that word,” I admit quietly, looking back at the stream. “I can hear it come out of a stranger’s mouth and it still fucks me up…”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t want you to be.”

“Leah—”

“Let’s be happy right here and now. Like we’re those kids again.”

I felt him nod, his voice tight. “Okay.”

I swallowed back my emotion, but I was feeling weak everywhere. His touch was feeding that craving within me; it was so easy to relapse when you knew how good something felt.

“So,” he finally said on with a sigh, “tell me something you’ve done I don’t know about in the last three years.”

I thought about that for a moment. “I went paintballing for the first time about a year ago.”

“Paintballing?”

“Yeah, and I got shot ten thousand times. They have zero mercy on women. The guy I was with was meant to protect me. He said he would, anyway.”

“And he didn’t.”

“No, he was, in your own words, a poodle protecting his owner from an attack.”

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