His body gets tight again, the air between us suddenly thick with tension. “Is that what we are, Sera? Friends?”
“Yes.” The word is inadequate. I wish I was brave enough to look him dead in the eye and say something seductive like If you want more, big boy, you gotta show me what you mean. But Harry Potter knows I don’t have the ovaries for that. “We have some unbreakable vow thing going on now that I have saved your life twice.”
Hunter narrows his eyes, and moves back so that his back is now flush with his chair. “Men and women can’t be friends. It’s a proven scientific fact.”
“Bullshit. They can to. I have tons of guy friends!”
The light in his eyes banks down to an ember. Smoldering and waiting for a chance to ignite once more. “How many do you have?”
I roll my eyes, squirm in my seat. I wince when my cold panties hit me, and my whole body shudders again. I’m going to need coffee stat as soon as the meal comes to warm up. “I may have exaggerated. I exaggerate eighteen hundred percent of the time, just so you know.” I get a grin. “I have four guy friends.”
“Are they single?”
I straighten my spine, square my shoulders. “Yeah, they are,” I say flippantly, except one, but seventy-five percent is almost a hundred.
Hunter shakes his head with an authority I’m sure Sherlock Holmes would envy. “They’re not your friends.”
I may have snarled. “What the frak do you know? They are my friends. Buddies. People I can trust. What does it matter if they have a Y chromosome or not?”
“Are any of your boys gay?”
“No,” I say, truthfully. “It wouldn’t matter if they were.”
“Baby.” There it is again, that word. Like a caress, I feel my dumb body relaxing. I love that word, and that he wants to call me by it. “No one would just want to be friends with you.”
I bark out a laugh. Poor guy doesn’t know, he just doesn’t know. “And I’m telling you, baby,” fraking sexiest word ever, “that they are my friends. Plain and simple. They’ve never put moves on me. Ever.”
We’re close, like kissing close. His eyes and face are all I can see. The din of plates and forks and knives tackling each other in the fight of food-to-mouth is gone, snippets of conversation from nearby tables might as well be had in Siberia all the good it does to register them. Hunter is it, he’s made the world disappear with his crazy questions. He’s made me forget about everyone else in the room.
The food comes. Something flashes in those baby blues but it’s gone before I can give it a name.
“You know, you can meet the boys, if you want. Matty thinks they’re cool.” I say around a bite of panini. “We can even all go hang out – as friends.”
I watch Hunt cut a perfect square out of his steak, making sure each surface has an equal amount of peppercorn sauce or whatever kind of sauce a New York steak comes with. I watch him bring it to his mouth, wrapping his mouth around the tines. I’m jealous of a utensil. Someone end my life.
“If you think they’re your friends, then fine.” Hunt chews, swallows, licks his lips. I can’t look away, or ignore the way I’m burning and tingling. “I don’t want to be your friend, Sera. Ever since that first day in the elevator-” I stop chewing, my eyes bugging out. “with Aly.” Click. The mysterious Alysha. Got it.
“You’d moved in a couple of days before that.” Hunt smiles at the memory.
“You were wearing one of your shirts, something about Ponyboy Curtis?” I nod slowly, afraid to break the spell.
“I saw you reading a thick-ass book, and you were reacting to it, freaking out at what was written there. The shirt made me smile. You made me smile, when it felt like I hadn’t smiled in years. You made my day better.”
I resume chewing, letting the chicken panini distract me from the implication of his words. “But you’re with her, Alysha, I mean.”
“Aly... Alysha never reads and she doesn’t wear shirts that only a few people would understand. She’s not like you. Never could be like you.”
My brain is full of white noise. I pinch myself, and feel the shot of pain in my arm.
“Aly and I had an arrangement that ended. Looks like she’s been talking to my mother.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this.” I release my hold on my sandwich, setting it down on my plate. My heart’s beating loud, blood swooshing in my ears. I watch his mouth move, God, that mouth. Why couldn’t I just have a taste? Just a tiny one?
Because you’ll want more. He’s not for you.
An agitated sound comes deep from his throat. Impatient. “I’m not with her. I stopped everything I had with her the day after the elevator. Especially when you were the one that took me to the hospital and she was nowhere to be found. When you were the one that had to take Matty home and watch him overnight.”
“I did what anyone would’ve done. I had to help you out. I mean, your mom coulda taken him home, too, but I was cool with it and-”
His hand is on my hand! It’s on my hand! Do I move it?
Jo. Harvelle. I am Jo Harvelle.
“Baby, you didn’t have to do any of that. You didn’t have to take Matty home with you, a stranger’s kid. If Aly was my girl like she really wanted to be, she’d have been there, not you.”
My heart’s beating even faster in my chest. I can feel it knocking on my ribs. My hands tremble as they rest on the tablecloth, one caught in Hunt’s grip. I don’t think I can eat anymore, and I really wanted to eat some more. His words make hope spring in my chest, a bright light that just needs a little bit of encouragement to glow. It’s going to hurt so much more when he crushes me to pieces.
“I also happened to find you leaning against the wall.” I pull my hand away slowly. “It could’ve been her who found you, not me.”
Hunter keeps eating, packing in the protein. “Should’ve been her. She was in my apartment when I told her I wasn’t feeling good and needed to get out in the hall for some extra space.”
The hallway is the tiniest part of the building. As always, my face does the talking for me. “I’m not rational when my sugar spikes. I can’t think properly or logically. I just want what I want. And I wanted to get out.”
I nod, pretending like I understand.
“How long were you waiting out there, in the hall?” I’ve curled my hands into fists, nails biting into my skin, the pain centering me. I bite down on my back molars and wait. And wait. And wait.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Say whaaaat? “Are you bloody kidding me?” I say through clenched teeth, pulling air through my nose. If I ever see this chick again, I’m going to stab her with a fork. In the eye. “You could have died out there! What if I hadn’t come up when I did? What the frak is that?” I snap, looking around our table, trying not to look at him. I don’t want him to stare at my face and see what’s there – I care what happens to him, more than I should. Bloody hell!
People around us are starting to eavesdrop. I guess when I threw out the D word, s’more like a glowing neon sign over our conversation for listen here!
When I look at Hunter, a supremely satisfied smile sits on his mug. It’s a good look on him, better than when Jane Foster saw Thor in his full Asgardian armour. Hunter would look stunning in armour.
“I’m sorry. I forgot that my volume control’s off.” I wrap my hands around the condensation of my cold glass of water. I let the coolness soothe me, as much as it can.
“How can someone do that? Just leave you out there?” Staring at my water, watching the ice float, flashes of memory hit my frontal lobe as I remember that day. I glare up at him, eyes wide, mouth open.“Oh my God, what about Matty? She was there when I yelled out for him? What the fuck was she doing, taking a dump?” I growl, like a crazed cat, swiping and hissing at any moving objects in its personal space. I want to punch something.
Hunter laughs. A full head thrown-back belly kinda laugh. I did that. Me, Sera Delos, fat ass, big thighs, awesome nerdy shirts.
I did that! But he doesn’t answer, so I leave it, for now.
The conversation is easy and light as we finish our meals and I order a cup of coffee. There is no dessert for either of us.
I learned that besides his favourite movie being The Goonies he has a healthy respect for all Martin Scorsese movies. When he told me he never watched any British television, I swore that it would rock his world. His eyes got that ember look in them again, and I squirmed in my chair. No one has ever looked at me like that before.
“I still haven’t seen The Avengers.” Hunt says with a smile. I’m sputtering, choking on my coffee.
“That could be on par with never having seen Star Wars.” All Hunter does is raise his eyebrows, like oh, yeah? “No. No way. What is wrong with you?”
“I have a lot wrong with me, actually.”
I scowl, sticking my tongue out at him. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. Well, looks like you’re going to be borrowing a lot of my DVDs. There are rules to be followed when it comes to my preciousses.” Gollum would be proud.
“Why don’t we watch them together?” Oh, smooth, Hunter MacLaine. Smooth. “Friends do that. They watch movies together. It happens,” he shrugs, but if I look closely, he looks like he has a lot riding on my answer.
“This is true.” I gulp down more coffee, ignoring his suggestion. I just can’t have Hunter, alone with me, in my apartment. I might do something that I really, really want to do. Subject change!
I’m now wondering how Matty is doing, if he’s okay with the Duchess and if his sugars have levelled out. “Can you call to see if Matty’s okay?”
Hunt’s eyes soften, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders and relaxing. Something makes me think that Alysha wasn’t very nice to Matty. Another reason to Karate Kid her skinny ass.
“I was going to call in a bit, but if you really want to know-” He dials up the number, puts the phone to his ear while watching me. “Hey Mom. Put Matty on the phone, please. Yeah, I’ll talk to you later, but I want to speak to the kid. Yeah. Have a good night, then.” A pause, then, “Hey, little man. Did you get a shower?” Pause. “Good. Are you watching a movie? Which one? Ah, kid, again?” Babbling from the other end. “Alright. We’ll see you soon, okay. Yeah, love you, too. Sera says hi. Alright, I’ll tell her. Bye, buddy.”
I’m grinning like a fool, having listened to that conversation. How did I ever think Hunter was an asshole to his kid?
“Ready to go?” I nod, fishing for my wallet in my purse. Hunter gives me a Terminator look that probably means cease and desist. I do neither of these things.
“I’m going to pay for what I ate. We’re friends. Friends share the bill. It’s a proven fact. You don’t mess with fact, Hunt.”
His eyes get lazy when I use his nickname, like I’m stroking a puppy and he loves the feel of my hands on his back. “Not if one friend decided to treat the other one, for you know, looking after him twice, and getting him to the hospital that one time?”
“I... uh...” Shit.“ You can’t use that bloody trick forever!” I shove my wallet into my bag again, letting him do what he wants. “Next time, it’s on me. Got it?”
“Sure.” He might as well have said never for all the good it does.
As we leave the restaurant, Hunter grabs my hand again, tugging me along with him until we stride beside one another back to his car.
“You have gone out of friend territory. Please turn back at the slightest convenience,” I say using my GPS voice.
I get a squeeze along my fingers, Hunter’s palm getting tighter to mine.
“Who said I ever wanted to be friends?”
“I did. I’m pretty sure I did. Yes, I did.” I nod like he should understand what I’m saying. “I can’t be with you... like that.”
“What’ll it take to convince you, then?” He opens the passenger door and shuffles me into the seat once we get to his car. He’s leaning too close, way too close to me. He’s my world again.
I don’t want to want, but I fraking do.
“A kiss?” Hunter stares at my mouth and I swear my lips start itching, tingling.
If this was that cracked universe where him and I get together, I would lean forward about now, having him step back a few steps so I could be standing right in his space. I’d relish his body heat and put my hands to his ribs, under the hoodie.
I would smell the way his detergent mixes with his cologne and the smell of insulin, I would pull it deep in my lungs. I would let my hands trail up onto his pecs, maybe even graze his nipples and the piercings he has there, and up, up, up to his neck letting my hands get used to the warmth there.
I’d hear his breath get heavy, fast. Maybe he’d even put his hands on the small of my back, fingers slightly hitting the globes of my ass – just enough of a suggestion that I’d beg for him to touch me there. Or maybe they would clench at my hips, and every little thing I did that he liked would cause his hands to tighten around them, pulling me closer to his big body.
And then, I’d scrape my palms along his skull-trim, and bring his head closer to mine. Slowly, so slowly that I’m going to die if I don’t get to taste him soon. There. Lips connect, touch, and go back to our respective spaces only to collide once more, again and again. I’d flick my tongue out, trace his bottom lip, get him to open for me and get his taste. I’d become drunk with it, delirious with the pleasure of it.
So, the answer’s simple, just really hard to say. I’m not that person, and this is real life. “No.”
In the thirty-minute drive to Hunt’s mom’s house I’ve contemplated opening the door and throwing myself onto the highway five times. Five. Times. I can’t stand the quiet, and the way the silence wraps around me, and makes me think of what could have been. What his kiss would’ve felt like, what it would be like to finally, finally have my first kiss.
Then I opened my mouth to say no, of all bloody things.
Hunter’s reaction to my negatory response has my stomach all twisted up in a labyrinth more convoluted than King Jareth’s. He’s been silent. With the radio off, it presses down on me, sitting heavy on my shoulders when all I want to do is break it apart and say something that’ll make him laugh.
I need to make him laugh.
His hand’s on the stick-shift, just settled there, clutching it casually. Keeping my eyes directed straight ahead, I reach for his hand. Cradling it between both of mine, I settle it on my thigh, lacing our fingers together.
Rejection sucks all the way around, and I’ve hurt him, I think. He doesn’t move from my grip, but he doesn’t acknowledge the presence of my fingers between his, either. Damn it.
Hunter parks on the street, the mansion on his side of the road, looming up with its glorious lighting on the front grounds. A mansion is just as majestic as its lighting, and the Duchess knows it.
Tugging his hand back, I keep both of mine wrapped around his paw. He kisses my knuckles, keeping his lips pressed there as his eyes stay stuck on my face, asking for permission.
“I like what we have. I like being with Matty, and I like hanging out with you. Don’t ruin it,” I say, voice soft in the darkness of the car – his door light’s busted. “Please don’t ruin it.” I can’t breathe – we’re too close to each other, his lips still warm on my skin, like a mark, a brand. That little contact has changed me forever.
A grunt from Hunter. His lips lose contact with my hand, but I won’t let go. “What about what I want? When do I get to choose?” His teeth flash in the dark, the shadows covering half his face. He might as well have pulled my heart out of my chest and stepped on it. I’m offering what I can offer without becoming destroyed when he walks away. Can’t he see?
“You made all this fucking shit, my entire fucking life, better just by walking into it with your stupid shirts.” Hunter’s eyes are blazing, the most animated I’ve ever seen him. I’m struck dumb, in awe of what he’s showing me. “That’s all it took. One look at your shirts, a different one every day after you’d c
ome home, and fuck – Fuck! I wasn’t drowning anymore. I couldn’t wait to see what you had next. I’d listen for you to come out of your place, wonder what other little facet of you you’d show me.”
I do an awesome fish-out-of-water impression, and continue to stare. What? Who? Where am I? Am I still Sera Delos, geek extraordinaire?
His hand has left the cage of mine, and wrapped itself around the side of my throat, fingers curling around the nape of my neck. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.
“I’m not going to kiss you. Not until you’re sure of what you want, Sera.”
I deflate, sucking in air. “Good?” Jesus, wrong punctuation. Hunter notices, too, since his fingers give me a playful squeeze around my neck, like I’m being cute. I didn’t know I could be cute. I can do awkward really well.
“I want you to know that this happening. I’m going to be in your life, and you’re going to be in mine and Matty’s. You make it better. I just have to find a way to make yours just as good.” For one second, I believe him.
“I... I don’t know what to say to that.” I clear my throat. “I’m not sure if the appropriate response is ‘stalker much?’ or not.”
Hunter laughs, getting sexier by the second. I get another squeeze around the side of my neck and he brings our foreheads together. I close my eyes and let myself have this moment, because I want it, damn it.
He’s not for you.
“Maybe I’m being too intense. Maybe I’m going to scare you off.” He lets go of me, unbuckling my seat belt with a jab of his finger. “Maybe you’ll realize you’re the one I want and shut up about it.”
I rear back and snarl, “Yeah, okay, best way to get me to fall for you – be a dick. This isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey, MacLaine! I don’t ‘yes, Master’ and follow like a good little bitch. Jesus, you almost had me. Almost.” I get into a scuffle with my belt, which has trapped one of my arms, and won’t let go. I start growling at it, but with every movement I make, the belt just keeps getting tighter and tighter. Wrenching myself free, arm smarting, I wrestle the door latch and get out of the car.