I was approaching an open dorm room door when two familiar voices made me stop in my tracks.
“I’m trying to tell you that you’re fucking up,” I heard Lowe snap.
“I know what I’m doing,” Jake replied, sounding irritated.
Curious, and yes, hoping to overhear my name, I pressed back against the wall and held my breath.
“Jake, I’m confused. I thought you got me to throw this thing, invite her here, so you could talk to her, patch things up. Who the fuck is the redhead?”
My mouth dropped open. They’d orchestrated this party just to get me here? What? Since when did Jake and Lowe work together on anything… especially something involving me?
“The redhead doesn’t matter. The whole point of tonight was to get Charley and me in the same room and show her what life is going to be like for us if we’re not together. Practically strangers at a party. I know Charley. She’s hating this as much as I am. We’re possessive of each other. We need to be in each other’s lives, know what’s going on with each other. Sooner, rather than later, she’s going to realize what a mistake this is. But not if she’s three hours away. It was only when we started hanging out again in Edinburgh that not being together was too hard.”
He was… manipulating me?
I just stopped myself from gasping out loud.
Jake wasn’t over me. This wasn’t… what the hell was this?
“I hate to tell you this but your plan is backfiring. She thinks you’ve moved on so she’s moving on. She thinks this proves that she was right to break up with you.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
I’d done a lot of cowardly things these last few months, but walking away from this wasn’t going to be one of them. Nobody, nobody manipulated me, and got away with it!
With anger burning in my blood, I stormed into the dorm room Jake and Lowe had chosen to have their little tête-a-tête. They both blanched when they turned to see who was interrupting them.
My eyes must have registered my feelings of betrayal when they met Lowe’s because he flinched. “Charley, it’s not—”
“Since when do you align yourself with him?” I snapped, gesturing to Jake. “You got together to manipulate me? Are you high?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I was trying to help two friends out. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” Lowe shook his head, looking between Jake and me. “It was a mistake to get involved and I’m now uninvolving myself.” He was still shaking his head as he walked past, not meeting my fiery gaze.
As soon as he was gone, Jake took a step toward me, holding up his hands in placation. “Don’t be pissed. I was just trying to fix us.”
“No.” I stepped back. “You were playing games, and I thought we were done with that.”
“Charley,” he stared at me, looking incredulous, “did you honestly just expect me to give up, walk away, after everything? I didn’t know what else to do. You wouldn’t have come here if I said I just wanted to hang out, talk, try to actually work out our problems instead of running from them. You’re the one acting like a child here. I just picked up where you left off.”
I couldn’t actually dispute any of that, which made me even more pissed, hurt, defensive, scared and… confused.
I started to shiver. “I… I can’t do this.” I turned away.
I hadn’t taken two steps when I felt his hand wrap around my wrist. Jake tugged me, forcefully, pulling me around so I stumbled into his chest. His lips crashed down on mine, his kiss hungry, desperate, angry…
For a moment I forgot everything else but the hard pressure of his mouth on mine, the smell of his cologne, the feel of his body. I was surrounded.
Drowning.
And I let it happen.
His lips moved from my mouth to my chin, along my jaw, as his hand slid up my waist, his thumb just grazing my breast. I sighed, my body arching into his. I was hot. Hot and wanting. Nothing else mattered but the way I felt when he touched me.
His voice was ragged in my ear. “I’ve missed you so much. I love you so fucking much.” He squeezed my waist and pulled me closer, his mouth reaching for mine again but those three little words had broken through the spell of lust created by Jake’s proximity and the four beers I’d had.
“Stop,” I whispered, pushing gently on his chest.
Instead of stopping, Jake kissed me again.
I pushed harder, breaking contact. “Jake, stop!”
He stumbled back, frustration and something else in his face. Panic? “Charley—”
“No.” I moved away from him, holding a hand out to ward him off. “This was a mistake. We’re…” I trailed off, not really knowing what to say as I tried to catch my breath.
We stared at each other in tense silence.
That’s when I came to the hardest decision of my life.
I felt like someone had stuck burning needles into every muscle in my body, and all I could feel was torturous pain, and I didn’t know why it was necessary. What point it had? Why it had to be that way? I started to imagine that perhaps those needles were my family, and horribly in that moment I resented the hell out of them. “We’re done for good. We can’t be friends and we can’t be this. Lose my number, Jake.”
He looked grief-stricken. “You can’t be serious?”
The tears slipped down my cheeks now and I brushed them hastily away. “Deadly. I won’t answer if you call.”
“Why?” he shook his head, his own resentment building his gorgeous eyes. “Just tell me why. A real answer this time.”
“I told you why. You didn’t listen.”
And just like that, I turned and walked out.
It was hard to make sense of something to someone else when you had a hard time figuring out if it really made sense to yourself. But I wasn’t crazy.
The truth was I’d made a promise. This was me keeping it.
I left Dad at his hotel talking to Mom on the phone, reassuring her that he was all right, I was all right, and that we were… talking things out. Although I still didn’t feel one hundred percent certain that we’d reached an understanding, I hoped we would by the time he left.
For now, I headed to my boyfriend’s apartment.
Something had shifted inside me when Jake sprung to my defense. It didn’t seem like much, but in reality, knowing he had my back was a huge step toward me trusting him. The old Jake was too determined to keep on my dad’s good side to ever interfere in any small parental disputes I might have had. He’d once sat quietly in the corner of the living room while my mom and dad refused to listen to me about being a cop.
He’d changed.
Anxious to see him, I hurried up to his apartment.
“Jake’s not here,” Beck said as I followed him into the kitchen.
Sitting at the kitchen table were Claudia and Lowe. I smiled at my girl. “Have you seen him?”
Claud shook her head. “Nope. But—”
“She’s been too busy planning our summer tour,” Beck interrupted, offering me a can of soda.
“No, thanks.” I raised an eyebrow at Claudia. “Summer tour?”
Lowe grinned. “It’s what we were talking about at Teviot. Claudia is amazing. She’s already helped us book eight gigs for the summer, and she thinks we can turn it into a state tour. It could get us noticed.”
“Isn’t that expensive?”
Lowe shrugged. “We’re pooling our resources. And these are paying gigs.” He nudged Claudia. “Now I just have to convince Claud to be our manager and come on tour with us.”
“If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to,” Beck said, trying—and failing—to sound casual.
I studied them carefully, wondering what I was missing. “Well… that sounds great. And you should think about it, Claudia. It might be a lot of fun to tour with them.”
Claudia shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Jake is—”
“A sappy, overachieving, broody little son of a bitch
and you could do much better.” Beck grinned up at me.
I made a face at him and had just turned back to Claudia when I got a text.
You should know I’m in the kitchen of this blond chick I’m kind of in love with. If you see her, tell her I miss her and to get her ass back here.
“Jake is waiting for you—”
“In our apartment,” I finished for Claud, waving my phone at her.
I wondered why Jake had gone back to my place when he knew I was hanging out with my dad. It occurred to me that perhaps he was concerned my dad might’ve said something to change my mind about our relationship. I longed for the days when we could stop reassuring each other about our mutual commitment.
When I got to the apartment, Jake was in the kitchen with Maggie. I tried to be polite to her, but I was in a hurry to talk to my boyfriend so I offered a quick hello and goodbye as I dragged Jake into my room.
“Eager, are we?”
“I just wanted you to know that we’re okay. Despite my dad and everything.”
Instantly, Jake’s eyebrows puckered. “Speaking of your father… I really want to hear how things went with your dad tonight, but I have to know something that’s been bugging me since he mentioned it… Alex?”
I’d actually forgotten my dad had mentioned Alex’s name. Shit.
Now for the truth. I had no idea how Jake would react to it.
Alex Roster was one of my best friends. But for a while… he was more than that.
I took a deep breath. “The guy, the one I dated for ten months freshman year of college… it was Alex.”
Jake tensed and then he gently pushed me away. “Alex was the guy?”
Sensing this was going somewhere bad, I hurried to explain. “After you left, everything was different. We’d both changed and we grew close. We’re really good friends. At college we decided to give it another go. It worked for a while but I couldn’t give him what he wanted and he couldn’t give me what I needed.” I shrugged. “We broke up, but we’ve stayed friends. He’s been seeing his girlfriend Sharon for ages. They’re happy together and—”
“Ten months?” Jake interrupted. He’d paled. “You fucked him?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Jake…” I felt betrayed by the question. “That’s not even fair. You probably fucked an entire sorority house while we were broken up.”
“They weren’t goddamn Alex Roster!” he yelled, brushing past me.
I watched on as he wore out my carpet, pacing back and forth.
“All that time we were dating, you said you had no feelings for him and you were lying to me?”
I’d expected him to not like the news, but I hadn’t expected him to be so angry and hurt. “No, I wasn’t lying. I didn’t have feelings for him then,” I promised. “Like I said, Brett’s death changed us. You breaking my heart changed me. You left, Jake. Alex stayed.”
Jake jerked to a stop, like I’d hit him. “Is that how it’s going to be forever? You winning an argument for the rest of our lives by throwing that in my face?”
“I threw it in your face for this particular argument because it has relevance. You wanted to know how I ended up dating Alex.”
“For ten months?” He shook his head in disbelief and slumped down on the bed. “God, the thought of you with him…” Jake closed his eyes. “The thought of you with anyone else…” His dark, tumultuous gaze met mine. “You were in love with him?”
“No.” I sat next to him. “That’s the reason we broke up. He told me he loved me but I didn’t love him. We weren’t right for each other, Jake. He didn’t want me to be a cop, and I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a little crazy. He drove himself nuts worrying about me. And he… he was too concerned with how everything looked to everyone else. And…” I curled my hand around Jake’s neck, drawing our faces closer. “It was never passionate between us. It was just nice. And you have no idea how heartbreaking ‘just nice’ is when you know what ‘beautiful’ tastes like.”
“Yes, I do,” Jake whispered against my lips before closing his eyes again. He leaned his forehead against mine as he reached for my free hand. “This is how you felt watching me with Melissa?”
“Yes,” I whispered back.
Jake’s expression crumbled and suddenly he was cupping my face in his hands, his anguished eyes blazing into mine. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry I hurt you over and over again.”
“Jake…” I folded into him, wrapped my arms tightly around him as his enclosed around me.
“Every day,” he said softly, “I’m going to spend every day making it up to you.”
I sat in his arms for a while as he rocked us gently.
Finally Jake broke the silence. “Your dad? How did it go tonight?”
“You’re having dinner with us tomorrow,” I said, making the decision on the spot. No way would Dad change his mind about Jake if he didn’t spend time with him. I pulled back to look at Jake.
“Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight,” I abruptly tugged up the hem of his T-shirt. Without questioning, Jake raised his arms and let me pull it off. “When you defended me,” I threw his shirt on my chair and slowly drew my own sweater up over my head, “it felt amazing. I don’t need anyone to fight for me, Jake.” I pressed a soft kiss to his waiting mouth, coasting my fingertips across his chest, my thumbs brushing his nipples, my touch making him shudder. “But I have to admit that I like that you want to.”
“Always,” he said, arching his neck for me as my lips trailed kisses along his jaw and down his throat.
I caressed his abs with my hands, soft, gentle touches that accelerated his breathing. I flicked my tongue over his nipple and his hands clamped around my arms in reaction. “Let me.” I looked up at him.
His eyes burned with lust. “Torture me?”
I shook my head. “That implies you won’t to get play too. I’m just asking you to let me play first.”
Jake nodded, his excitement evident. “Whatever you want, baby. I’ve missed you.”
Kissing my way down his stomach, I felt my own skin start to heat and the pulse between my legs throb at the increase in Jake’s breathing. When I reached the low-slung waistband of his jeans, I traced the skin just above with my tongue, excited by the low, deep growl emanating from Jake’s throat.
His erection strained against his zipper.
“Let me help you with that.” I smiled up at him mischievously. “It looks painful.”
The look on his face almost broke me. His features were taut, his eyes fogged with desire, and everything in me wanted to answer it—just rip off his jeans and mine and jump him.
Patience was something I needed to practice.
Jake watched me, his intensity making me shiver with anticipation as I unzipped his jeans and pulled at the waistband of his boxers underneath. He tilted his hips off the bed, giving me easier access. I tugged his jeans and underwear down, pulling off his boots so I could remove his clothes completely.
He sat there, comfortable with his nakedness. And so he should be. I licked my lips, my eyes roaming his sculpted body and throbbing erection.
“I’m a lucky, lucky girl.” I grinned up at him, making him smile wryly back at me.
“I’m glad you think so.”
I shook my head as I stood up. “I know so.” I unclipped my bra, letting it drop to the floor. Jake’s eager eyes fastened on my naked breasts as my nipples tightened into hard buds.
Taking my time, I kicked off my boots, unzipped my jeans, and shimmied out of them. Wearing only my panties, I stepped closer so our legs touched.
Jake slid his hands up my outer thighs until they rested on my hips, his eyes devouring every inch of me. “I think you’ve got it the wrong way around.”
“What?”
“I’m the lucky one.”
I nodded solemnly. “Yeah, you are.”
He shook his head, seeming to marvel at me, a look that turned my insides to mush. “Do
you have any idea how sexy you are?”
I smiled cockily and pointedly at his hard-on. “I have an inkling.”
Jake laughed, biting his lower lip as he hooked a finger into my panties. “Are these leaving us any time soon?”
Nudging his legs apart so I could step between them, I lowered myself to the floor. “Eventually. I have something more urgent on my mind, though.”
“Charley,” he said, breath short, his dark eyes flashing with excitement. “You don’t have to.”
“When have I ever not wanted to?” I reminded him.
His groan filled my ears as I took him into my mouth, sucking lightly at first at his warm, salty taste. I licked the pre-cum from his tip, teasing him mercilessly with my mouth until he begged me to stop.
I gave him what he wanted, sucking him hard as I pumped the base with my fist.
When I knew he was close, I stopped.
His chest rose and fell in pants as he stared at me in disbelief. “Why?”
I stood, only to crawl onto the bed next to him. I kissed him softly. “Now do me, but don’t let me come. Let’s save that.”
Understanding, Jake asked, “Delayed gratification, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“It fucking hurts,” he smiled ruefully back at me.
“But it’ll be worth it.” I lay back on the bed and watched him as he pulled my panties down very slowly, torturously so. I was already turned on from going down on him and didn’t think it would take much to climax. Jake had a challenge on his hands to stop before it happened.
At the touch of his tongue on my ankle, I realized clearly he was up for pushing me to breaking point. He pressed soft kisses up my legs, alternating between the two, positioning them how he wanted, bending my knee so he could lick the crease behind it. I squirmed, my whole body tingling with anticipation. My nerves sparked, begging for fire.
He pushed my legs apart, crawling between them. My hips jerked at the feel of his mouth on the inside of my thigh. He scattered soft kisses along my skin, driving me crazy.
When he proceeded to lick the crease between my thigh and my sex, I whimpered his name pleadingly. Taking pity, Jake tickled me with the stroke of his finger seconds before his mouth came down on me.