Page 37 of Keep Me Still
My mouth grazes her bare shoulder and she shivers. I’m about to press my lips to her exposed neck because God help me, I have to, when Corin and Skylar spin into us and Layla pulls away—just enough that she’s out of reach of my mouth. She glances shyly up at me, like they just caught us going at it or something, and I see that girl I knew a year ago. A million questions launch themselves in my brain but I’m ignoring those fuckers with all my might. This isn’t about questions and answers and clearing up what went wrong. I want her to have a good time, and I want her to be able to have a good time with me without all this shit between us. More importantly, I wanther.
So I huff and puff and barely resist the urge to piss a circle around her every time another guy checks her out. We dance, and it’s fun. And hot as hell. Until her roommate pulls me aside when Layla’s talking to Skylar and tells me in no uncertain terms how many people she knows in New York who would be happy to puree my balls for the right price.
“Got it,” I tell her with a nod. “Balls gone.”
She glares at my answering grin, but I can’t be angry with anyone who obviously cares so much about the same girl I care about. There’s something about Layla that has everyone wanting to protect her. She’s tougher than when I first met her, bolder, but that vulnerability is still there, and it still sends testosterone coursing through me at dangerously high levels. I can’t take it anymore. I have to know the answer to at least one of my questions.
Leaning down so I don’t have to shout over the music, I let my lips graze her earlobe. “Can we get some air?”
She nods and we head toward the door. The outside air smacks me in the face, but it’s a welcome change from the damp heat of the club that had Layla’s intoxicating scent threatening to drown me. There’s something else coming off her, something warm and sweet, and once again, I’m barely controlling the impulse to lick her. Damn, there area lotof places I’d like to lick her.
She’s leaning against the brick wall of the club and inhaling the fresh air as desperately as I am.
I clear my throat. “So Skylar’s really into your roommate.”Or, he wants to get into your roommate.Same difference for him I guess.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“You having a good time?”
“I am. Are you?” Her shoulders stiffen and mine sag because we always come back to this. Plagued by this fear that we don’t feel the same way about each other looming over us.
“YouknowI am,” I tell her, stepping closer to remind her of how close we were a few minutes ago and how well she could feel what a good time I was having. “Can I ask you something? Maybe more than one something?”
She eyes me warily, like I’m either about to propose or tell her this was all a big joke. “If you must.”
Wow, we’ve been here before. The first time we ever talked. For half a second I’m that cautious guy again, afraid of offending or disappointing. But that guy struck the fuck out with this girl once already, so I’m done with him. “What is it about me that still has you all tensed up and pissed off? Because I didn’t come here to hurt you, not to this club and not to SoCal.”
So quickly I almost miss it, her walls come down, the ones she always puts up when I get too close. Her beautiful eyes open so wide I almost lose myself in the endless blue-green pools. But then she recovers, blinking and clearing her throat. Her defensive stance relaxes a little more and she sighs. “I keep telling myself I’m putting the past behind me, you know? Moving forward and all that. But sometimes when I see you, or you look at me a certain way, I’m right back there. Left behind in Hope Springs and…” She looks away briefly and I want to grab her, kiss her until any pain I ever caused disappears into the night. “Hurt. I was hurt. And angry. Here you had this other girl waiting for you, and I felt like a complete idiot when I found out.”
My head swims in confusion. “Whoa, what other girl?”
She glares at me for a full minute before answering. “Danni,” she spits out.
Danni?“Jesus, Layla,that’swhat you were so pissed about?” I snort out a laugh and she pins me with a fiery look as full of anger as I’ve ever seen her. “Her?”
“Don’t laugh at me, O’Brien. You were the first boy I ever liked that way, and I had all these plans of telling you after the Christmas parade, of letting you be my first kiss, and maybe more, and you and your friends dropped this…bomb on me. Bomb after bomb actually, and it sucked. Bad.” Her eyes flash, reflecting the pain I caused and didn’t stick around to heal. That damn parade. The one that ended with Danni and Tuck surprise attacking us and blurting out in front of Layla what I hadn’t yet told her.
“It wasn’t like that,Flaherty. Danni and I—” My words make her flinch. I reach out but she steps back, pressing herself up against the building to get as far from me as possible. “Layla, please listen. I was crazy into you. I just knew it was new for you and I wanted to take it slow. Which, by the way, wasn’t easy for me. And yeah, a relationship like that was new for me too, if I’m being honest. But Danni wasn’t even an old girlfriend. She was just my best friend’s sister and a girl who had a habit of being openly affectionate, and not just with me. She and Tuck know about my dad so they check in on me from time to time, but that’s it. Maybe she and I had a little fling the summer before but it was nothing like what you and I had.”Have.
I watch her bite her bottom lip, a storm swirling in her eyes as she contemplates my confession. “Well, you shouldn’t have let her kiss you like that when we were…whatever we were. And I shouldn’t have heard that you were moving back to Colorado from her.”
My chest tightens from the sting of the pain in her voice. “Agreed, on both accounts. I’m sorry.” Leaning into her space as far as I can without touching her, I lower my voice. “Forgive me?”
“I’ll think about it.” She’s smiling. And I can breathe again. “And now I get to ask a question.”
“Fair enough. Have to admit, knowing you were jealous is a pretty big turn on.” I shove my hands in my pockets so I don’t reach out and grab her to me like a fucking animal.
“Why are you at this college?”
My thoughts struggle to catch up to the abrupt subject change. “Um, to get a degree of higher learning and play soccer?” It’s a question instead of an answer and she doesn’t miss it.
“Are you asking me if that’s why?”
“I’m asking in hopes you’ll accept that answer instead of the real one.”
“Why?”
“So things don’t get weird.”And you don’t run away screaming.Or hit me. Or hate me.Truth is, I can never tell her the real reason I’m here.
