Page 116 of Till The Sun Dies (Checkmate 2)

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Angelo

Plastic Fantastic

When Laineswearsshe’ll be okay alone for ten minutes, I hightail it out of our hotel room and dash into the parking lot to escape the giant fucking elephant in our room.

I said I needed to buy food before I ate all of hers, but in reality, I need to escape before my cock breaks through my jeans and embarrasses us both.

She was freaking out an hour ago; tears in her eyes, shaking hands, ghostly skin, all becauseSkeeteris a fucking creep and reminded us both of the scared and hurt girl I’m road-tripping with.

It’s easy to forget when everyone is laughing and messing around. It’s easy to live out your fantasies and consider themaybeswhen the girl of your dreams parades around in tiny denim shorts and giggles like she was never hurt.

But it all comes back when Jess and Kane noisily fuck against a wall, turn me on, and remind me in one cruel sweep how I’ll never have that, all because of her past.

Fuck them for being them.

And fuck Graham for breaking someone perfect and beautiful who deserves that kind of freedom.

Not in a million years can a man throw Laine around the way Kane throws Jess. The second I –or this hypothetical man– were to touch her, he’d be walking that minefield again, and each step he took could end with an explosion.

Knowing the severity of what Graham did to her doesn’t slow my desperation. Even being here and playing chaperone, and at the most, a friend, doesn’t slow me down.

Hearing those noises next door turned me the fuck on.

It’s inappropriate. It’s obscene. It’s crazy.

And yet, when she turned to me on the bed and stared into my eyes, I was tempted to risk it all and press my lips to hers.

We’d know. We’d know in that instant which kind of explosion we’d be in for. The good kind. Or the bad kind.

To feel her lips on mine, to have her breath in my lungs, and her hands on my body…

But the second I considered it, in the single moment it took to convince myself to step off the ledge, she turned away and brushed me off.

I’m still the friend deeply entrenched in a zone I’ll never be able to dig my way out of.

Fuck.

I approach the quieting freeway with my hands on my head, my chest lifting and falling with the force of my breath. I need to buy some food. I need to calm the fuck down. I probably need to whack off in the truck stop bathroom to work her out of my system.

And I need to do it all in ten minutes or less, because I refuse to leave her for longer than that.

When the traffic is clear, I jog across the road and into the diner we sat in only an hour or so ago. The booth we sat in remains empty, the same waitress from earlier continues to check her teeth in the reflection of the napkin holder, and the same old guy flips a burger on the grill behind her.

“Hey there.” She stands tall and looks me over. “What can I getcha?”

“Something fast. Whatever you’ve already got warm.”

“We got lasagna? Or we got some leftover surf and turf.”

“Lasagna.” I don’t fancy dying from salmonella today. “Throw some fries in, too.” I move to the fridges at the end of the long counter and take out a bottle of soda. Setting it in front of the cash register, I fish my wallet out of my back pocket and toss a twenty down. “You got any chocolate? Or ice cream?”

“Both over in the freezer, darlin’.” She lifts her chin like I need more direction. “Behind you.”

Wandering away while the burger flipper adds food poisoning to my lasagna, I stop in front of the freezers and wonder which would make her happiest.

Laine and Jess are ice-cream snobs. So snobby, in fact, that even though our family have an ongoing feud with the bitch that owns Dixie’s Ice-Cream Parlor in town, they still go there instead of boycotting, and mutter mean things under their breath to absolve themselves of guilt.

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