Page 14 of The Best Kind of Forever
His eyebrows jump to his hairline. “So you don’t think I have a bigger-than-average dick?”
The gears in my mind turn, my brain finally able to function at least enough to hold my tongue.
“I…didn’tnotsay that.”
His stare is stormy and intense, and his tongue peeks through his lips to periodically hydrate them. I wouldn’t mind denting the lower one with my teeth. Jesus, I need to be spayed.
“You’re adorable when you blush, you know that?” A flirtatious lilt skirts along his tone.
Of course his comment makes me blush even harder.
I’ve never been good with accepting compliments, so I decide to change the subject as discreetly as possible. “Your, uh, clothes have about two hours before they’ll be done,” I inform him.
“Thank you again for letting me borrow your washer and dryer.” There’s a genuineness that hangs off every word he says—something that’s been foreign to me in all my twenty-three years of existing on this godforsaken planet.
I don’t have the best track record with guys. My last ex, Wilder Mason, was a manipulator, but I was so blindly in love with him that I tricked myself into making up excuses for the way he treated me. I thought it was normal for him to always ask me where I’d be and who I’d been with. I thought it was normal for him to regulate how much I ate and what I wore. I hate my body because of the way he treated me. When I wasn’t in the mood to be intimate with him, he’d guilt-trip me, tell me I was being selfish by not tending to his needs, and convince me that no guy would ever want a girl who wasn’t sex-crazy.
I became Wilder’s puppet, his prisoner. He isolated me from all my friends, even my family. He yearned for control, and my eagerness to please him made me the perfect target for his manipulation. After a while, I wanted out, but I was too afraid to leave. I was afraid of what he would’ve done. I was afraid that he was going tohitme.
When my brother died, Wilder was the only one I could turn to. My relationship with my parents was too strained at the time. But after hearing about Roden’s suicide, he packed up all his things and left. A selfish part of me was relieved to be free of him, but the neglected part of me suffered without a support system. Wilder promised me he’d always be there for me, no matter what happened. That he’d always love me.
I’ve been chasing after love my entire life, wanting that gratification of meaning something to another person. But life doesn’t work that way. People don’t work that way.
Wilder destroyed the hopeless romantic in me. He destroyed my hope for love. And now I stay far away from any of those feelings, because I already know how the story ends. I already know that heartache is waiting for me at the finish line.
As much as I want to let Hayes in, I can’t. I don’t think I’d survive another person abandoning me. First my brother, and then Wilder. The two people I loved most at one point in my life. I hate love. I didn’t used to, but I do.
You either love too little and watch everything you’ve built slip through your fingers like sand in an hourglass, or you love too much, and that heap of sand weighs your chest down until you can’t breathe. Love isn’t black and white. It’s a murky gray, a bleak landscape devoid of effervescent life. And it’s my crucible.
“It’s the least I can do since I ruined them,” I remind him, my hand badgering at the roots of my ratty hair. I feel greasy and disgusting. I haven’t taken a shower in two days, my deodorant has definitely worn off by now, and I’m almost positive I’m rocking a whole raccoon eye look.
Hayes sits down next to me, the mattress giving way to his weight. “You need to stop being so hard on yourself,” he chastises, startling me when he reaches out to hold my hand. The raised scars on his palm send a lance of electricity through my arm, but I don’t pull away.
This is the closest I’ve been to him, so I take advantage of the proximity. Through a sleepy gaze, I memorize every part of him—his ambrosial cologne, his well-defined dimples, the forefront curl in his blond hair, the way his upper canines hang a bit lower than the rest of his teeth, the cerulean ring around his pupils.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I blurt out, and the minute those words windmill out of me, I want to slap a return to sender sticker on them.
Great. Good going, Aeris.
His seafoam irises turn a deeper shade as he ponders me, spotlighting the veins of gold branching out from his pupils. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?” he inquires.
I slam my lips together, withdrawing my arm from his grasp. “Because you don’t know me.”
“What’s your last name?” he asks, his voice sporting a warmth that’s enough to rid the goose bumps on my arms.
“Relera. Why?”
“I’m getting to know you, Aeris. Plus, I need to know the name of the beautiful girl who let me escort her home.”
That line shouldn’t have worked on me…but it did. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.
“What do you do for work?” he continues.
“I’m a content writer for a social media company called Your Ass Is Grass, which specializes in promoting unique vegan recipes,” I say, picking at my wrist—a nervous habit I’ve entertained various times before.
He cocks an eyebrow. “No way. Seriously? That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard,” he remarks, and I can tell he means every word of it.
“It’s not too bad.”
