Page 41 of Sugar Rush
When he was finished, we went back upstairs to get our bags and I had to pretend like I wasn’t dying inside at the prospect of everything going on around me. But at least I had the presence of mind to hop on the stairs before him, basically forcing him to stare at my ass as we went up.
I watched from the hall as he picked up a duffel bag from off his bed, slinging it over his shoulder. His tattoo stuff was probably already in the truck from work. He walked out, following me to the doorway of my bedroom. I picked up my bag, imitating his movement by slinging the strap over my chest to make it easier to carry.
“You’re not bringing that?” He asked, gesturing to my bedspread, where my stuffed clownfish, Orangey, was propped on my pillow.
I wasn’t exactly sure why, but embarrassment seized me, rushing up from my toes to heat up my whole body until I wanted to drop through the floor and die. Why did it bother me so much that he’d asked? I knew that he knew that I slept with it.
“No,” I answered quickly, hoping my blush wasn’t as obvious as it felt all over me. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” He asked, looking at me oddly.
“I said I’m fine,” I said again, resisting the urge to snap and just wanting the moment to be over. Was that why he was so hesitant to be with me? Did he still see me as a kid? We were only three years apart, but maybe to him that felt like a massive gap.Carrying around a stuffed animal and sleeping with it wasn’t going to help my image in his eyes, if that was the case. “Can we just go?”
“Go ahead,” he invited me, jerking his chin toward the stairs. I rushed past him, speeding down the stairs like I could leave behind the terrible awkwardness I suddenly felt. Why did I always have these ridiculous little emotional tantrums only when I was around him? It seemed unfair that I never felt flustered or embarrassed around any other alphas. But the one I actually cared about impressing, half the time I ended up looking like an idiot in front of.
Whipping through the front door, I waited by his truck, clutching my bag to my chest. I couldn’t obsess over my nerves the whole weekend. This was my one chance to convince Kieran that we should be together.
Taking a deep breath, I raised my face up into the pale sunlight, hoping it would calm me down. I could do this. Of course I could do this. I was the only one who could do it. I damn sure wasn’t going to let him keep avoiding me until we were geriatric, or some other omega got their hooks into him while I was gone away to college.
All I had to do was follow the plan.
KIERAN
BY THE TIMEI finished adding a last minute addition to my duffel bag and headed down the stairs, Jordy was already outside. He’d dashed off like a cheetah. A very confusing cheetah. What the hell had he been so embarrassed about? The damn fish? I’d never cared about that. I’d never even ribbed him about it in a casual way. Knowing where it’d come from, and why he was so attached to it, I’d have to be the biggest asshole on the planet to even consider it.
Maybe he was just feeling extra sensitive because of the trip. I couldn’t blame him. My nerves felt singed and raw, like live wires ready to spark and set things on fire from one careless touch. From an outsider’s perspective, nothing was strange or inappropriate. But from my perspective, it felt like we were about to cross this line that we could never go back over. If I showed him how incredibly tense I was, it would only feed into what he wanted from me.
But the idea of avoiding him, avoiding going too far with him, was starting to feel like an impossibility. Like something that had already slipped from my fingers and into the wind, where it could never be retrieved. I’d already revealed too much of myself to him. Too much of how I felt. But maybe that was just the selfish part of me that was so desperate to let go and let him have his way.
Once I’d wedged my feet into my combat boots, I leaned my hip onto the frame of our front door, raising my eyebrow. “Don’tyou want to wait until your dad gets up, at least? Or let him know we’re leaving?”
“Um, no,” he answered quickly, clutching his bag to his chest. The sun wasn’t that bright yet, but it was still shining down right into his hair, lighting up the pale ends with a pretty sheen. “I already talked to him about everything and got his rules and all that, so we’re fine. Can we just go? Like, now?”
He was way too eager to be alone with me, like always. If he was normal, he would have avoided it as much as possible. But Jordy had never been able to sense the ugly part of me, even with how smart he was. Sometimes it started to feel like he was incapable of noticing that part. But if he couldn’t tell what kind of person I was, then wasn’t it my responsibility to protect him from it? He wasn’t a kid or an idiot, but when it came to me… He had absolutely no sense of self-preservation.
“Yeah.” For a second I thought about walking to his side and opening his door for him, but he yanked it open and launched himself in before I had more than a second to consider it. Which was good, since I probably would have looked like a moron if I’d done that. We weren’t on some cheesy date.
I slung my bag into the little space behind our seats, and he shoved his into the floorboard. When I revved the engine, the radio flipped on to the heavy rock station I’d set it to. Jordy winced, slapping at the volume knob to silence it.
“Can I pick the music?” He asked, turning toward me so he could bat his long, dark eyelashes at me. “I actually made a fun road trip playlist for us.”
Groaning lightly, I grimaced.
“Please?” He asked again, poking out his pink bottom lip. “Your music gives me a headache.”
“I know, I know,” I grumbled. We were barely out of the driveway and I already felt wrapped around his finger. “Fine. Whatever.”
“Thanks!” He grabbed the aux cord, plugging it into his phone so he could open up the playlist. When the first song started playing, an extremely peppy and upbeat sugary pop song, I snorted and shook my head.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What?” He laughed, biting down into his lower lip. “You don’t like this?”
“Come on, Jordy. Didn’t I have to watch enough of this crap when we were kids?” It was the theme song to a show he’d been absolutely obsessed with, about a popular and pretty girl who was secretly a badass crime-fighting spy, and all the drama that came with her vastly different double lives. “Back then, I would have bet a million dollars that you were in love with Bunny,” I commented, referring to the main character.
He grinned, shaking his head. “I was in love with her older brother, actually.”
“I forgot about him,” I said. “He wore eyeliner and rode a motorcycle, right?”
