Lust

  “What’s the point in asking if you’re just going to lie to me?” Beth asked, furiously blinking back tears.“! see the way you look at her—I know you think she can give you what you want. Fine—go get it.” She whirled around, as if to leave, but he grabbed her arm and tugged her back around. She wasn’t walking away, not this time. All of this, the constant fights over nothing, the tears, the silent treatment, it had to end. They had to actually deal with this—which meant she was, for once, going to have to stick around.

  “I’m so sick of you making everything about sex,” he spit out, totally exasperated. How many times could they have the same conversation?

  “Me? What about you? You—”

  “No, you,” he argued. “This is not about sex, or Kaia, and you know it.” And he tried to force the image of her clinging to his wet body, of her lips on his, of her arms wrapped around him, out of his head. “This is about you. About you not trusting me. Not trusting us.”

  Beth’s face softened, and for a moment Adam thought he’d gotten through to her. Then she shook her head.

  “No. No!” She flung his arm off and pushed him away. “You can’t turn this around on me—this is about you acting like a jerk.This is about you skulking around in a boys’ locker room with another girl. This is about you wanting—” Her voice broke. “Wanting what you can’t have and acting like its all my fault.”

  “Beth …”

  “Of course I don’t trust us,” she said dully, sounding suddenly exhausted. “Right now, us sucks.”

  She walked away—and this time, he let her go.

  “Thanks for the heartfelt apology!” he called after her, punching the wall in frustration. The stinging pain in his knuckles only made him angrier.

  This was his reward for doing the right thing? For resisting temptation? He might as well have thrown Kaia down on the locker room floor, torn her clothes off, satisfied his every pornographic desire—why the hell not, if that’s what Beth was going to believe either way?

  He’d been there for her, he’d thrown himself into this relationship, he’d done everything he could for her—and she couldn’t even be bothered to ask him for the truth. She couldn’t be bothered to stick around for a damn conversation.

  And you know what?

  Good riddance.

  chapter

  11

  She’d never known a knee could be so sexy.

  But there it was. Under the table. An inch away.

  She could feel his leg there next to hers, could imagine moving hers over just a bit, just an inch, pressing their legs together. And that’s not all she could imagine. He was so close—she could just slip her foot out of her shoe, slide her toes up his calf, trace a gentle design across his skin. She could reach out, take his hand in hers beneath the table, massage his fingertips and then press him against her body, so hungry for his touch ….

  “Harper? What are you thinking about?”

  Adam’s warm voice startled her out of her frozen reverie. And thank God for small favors—if she didn’t stop obsessing over her stupid fantasies, she might miss the chance to turn them into reality. And that’s what this was—her chance.

  “Harper?” he repeated, sounding concerned. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing—don’t worry about it,” she assured him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m fine, it’s nothing,” she said again. “Besides, I’m supposed to be cheering you up. What are you thinking about? As if I have to ask …” Beth, of course. It was always Beth. Whether they were in the gazing-into-each-others-eyes-there s-only-two-of-us-in-the-whole-world mode, or in the I-may-never-speak-to-you-again mode (as, happily, they were tonight), Harper knew that the Blond One was never far from his thoughts.

  But Adam just laughed. “No, I’m not thinking about her, Harper, I swear—I’m just enjoying the music. Thanks again for dragging me out tonight.”

  It had been a brilliant idea—after all, who knew how long Beth would be stupid enough to stay away sulking, leaving Adam on the open market? Opportunities like this didn’t come along very often and didn’t last for very long—so Harper was planning to take full advantage of this one while she had it. Seize the day, right? She looked around at the grungy bar, the local band that was—just barely—cranking out something that bore a distant relation to music, and sighed. If only she didn’t have to seize the day in such seedy surroundings. Though she had to admit, what with the darkness, the haze of smoke, the music (sort of), the place had possibilities ….

  Of course, a true friend probably wouldn’t take advantage of Adam’s postfight instability, wouldn’t do her best to talk him out of a relationship he clearly wanted to stay in (not that she planned to stick with talking)—on the other hand, Harper reminded herself, wasn’t it her duty as a true friend to help him see the error of his ways?

  “You know I’m always here for you, Adam,” she said, hoping he would hear the emotion in her voice, would, for once, realize what all her loyalty, all her attention, all her efforts really meant.

  “It’s true, Harper—you’re really a great friend.”

  And that was Adam—hopelessly oblivious, as always.

  But so painfully perfect, in every other way.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, imagining what it might be like to open them to a different world, one in which Adam was sitting across the table gazing at her in that way, that tender awestruck way that had always been reserved for Beth. If she could just get him to really look at her, to see what he was missing. She raised a hand to her neck, let her fingers play their way down the bare skin until they reached her silky neckline—if she opened her eyes, would she catch him sneaking a forbidden glance, wondering what lay beneath?

  She opened her eyes.

  And the answer was no.

  He wasn’t even looking in her direction—he’d turned toward the door, toward a gaggle of girls from their school who had just walked in. Toward Kaia. Of course.

  And there went her perfect night, her golden opportunity.

  Kaia spotted them, raised an arm in greeting, and treated Adam to a long, slow smile. Harper just sneered. And waited.

  Adam paused for a moment, nodded briefly in acknowledgment—and then turned away.

  Harper breathed a sigh of relief, and only then realized that she’d been holding her breath, tensed and ready for rejection. But Adam was still there, and Kaia—one eyebrow raised in—surprise? Skepticism? Disbelief? Whatever—Kaia sat down across the bar.

  Good. And you’d better stay there, Harper thought. She resisted the impulse to make some snide comment about her nemesis—or about the fact that Adam seemed suddenly to have abandoned his Siamese twin act and was actually allowing some space to intrude between him and his illicit beloved.

  No reason to ruin a perfect moment—even for the perfect snark.

  Besides, the important thing was that he was staying away. Whatever the reason, Kaia had lost this round—she was across the bar and Harper was here, across from Adam.

  Across from his deep blue eyes and luscious smile and biceps that could—

  “Harper, there’s—there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  That’s it—no more gazing, no more dreaming, she told herself sternly. Must stay focused. Listen. Even though he was looking at her so intently—was, unbelievably, leaning in close and laying his hand on top of hers. Even though it was hard not to lose herself in the electrifying contact and in fantasies of where this might be going …. No. Must focus. Pay attention. Hope.

  “You’ve always said I could talk to you about anything,” he began hesitantly.

  Harper just nodded, afraid, for once, to speak.

  “Well … you know that Beth and I have been really happy together, that I think she’s wonderful ….”

  His voice trailed off, and Harper nodded again, impatiently. There was only so much of this she could listen to, and if the evening was about to devolve into yet another monologue about Bet
h’s million-and-one divine attributes, she was going to need a lot more to drink.

  “And I mean, she is wonderful,” he continued, “but …”

  But? That was more like it.

  “Well, this last week I’ve just been—”

  “Harper! Harper! Over here!”

  Oh God, not now.

  Distracted by the shrill voice, Adam broke off what he was saying, and they both looked up to see a pale, skinny girl waving frantically from a few tables away.

  “Harper! Look, we’re here too!”

  A ditzy blond sophomore who’d decided last spring to make Harper her role model, life trainer, and personal guru, whether Harper liked it or not.

  It wasn’t enough that the girl followed her around so much at school that Harper had dubbed her “Mini-Me”? She had to follow Harper here, too? Had to ruin what might have been her perfect night?

  “Just ignore her,” she urged Adam. “What were you about to say?”

  Adam paused, then laughed nervously. “You know what? Forget it.”

  “But—”

  “No, you go talk to your friends—I’m heading off to the bathroom.” He grinned. “You’ll still be around when I get back, though, right?”

  “I don’t know, Adam.” Harper looked pointedly at the next table over, where a middle-aged guy with too much stomach and too few teeth was chugging his beer, soggy cigarette lodged firmly in the corner of his mouth. “Lots of hot prospects around here—once you disappear, who knows who I’ll find….”

  He laughed, and Harper forced herself to join in. But as soon as he turned away, her face turned to ice. What if, when Adam came back, he’d lost his nerve, and never said whatever it was he’d been about to tell her? She couldn’t believe that one loser with bad timing had just torpedoed her moment—and here came Mini-Me now, dragging along her equally bland best friend, aka Mini-She.

  Both apparently gluttons for punishment.

  “Hey, Harper, didn’t you see us over there? I can’t believe that you’re here too!” Mini-Me gushed.

  “Isn’t the band great?” Mini-She asked excitedly.

  “Yeah, and the lead singer is so hot—don’t you think?” Mini-Me added.

  Harper looked up on stage, where scruffy Reed Sawyer, stoner, sixth-year senior, wannabe badass, all-around burnout—and lead singer of the Blind Monkeys—was torturing a guitar with only slightly less incompetence than the rest of his band of losers.

  “I think love must be blind and deaf,” Harper drawled.

  The girls looked back at her blankly.

  Harper was undecided. Despite their utter cluelessness and stalker tendencies, she rarely went out of her way to torture these girls—not out of pity or virtue, but because they were embarrassingly easy targets. On the other hand, as demonstrated by tonight’s disaster, her tolerance had apparently been a hideous mistake….

  “Hey, you know who else is here?” Mini-Me asked.

  “Britney Spears?” Harper guessed.

  “No way—but how cool would that be?!” Mini-Me said. Apparently she’d been absent the day sarcasm genes were handed out. “No—Kaia’s here! And you should see what she’s wearing—she says it’s from Dolce and Gabbana.”

  “So cool,” Mini-She sighed appreciatively.

  Harper rolled her eyes, taking only minimal joy in the fact that her little friends had apparently intruded on the new girl’s night too. The last thing she needed right now was a Kaia lovefest. Enough was enough.

  “You know, the scene here is getting kind of lame,” Harper confided. “I think pretty soon I’m going to head out to this party I heard about. You should—oh wait, no, they probably wouldn’t let you in.”

  “What?”

  “Where?”

  “A party?”

  Good, she’d hooked them. Now, to reel them in. “Yeah, some college guys who haven’t gone back to school yet,” she continued. “They’re set up in this old warehouse along the highway.”

  “No way!” Mini-Me said breathlessly. “So … think we could come with you?”

  “Well … I probably shouldn’t even have told you about it.” The girls looked crestfallen. “But since I have …” She pretended to stop and think for a moment, and then, “Hey, why not? If I give you the password, they should let you in.”

  Harper wrote down an address and “password” on a napkin and surreptitiously passed it to the girls. “You shouldn’t wait for me, though—I have to stick around here for a while to take care of Adam.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but he and Beth had another fight.”

  There, that should get the gossip chain started and hopefully put a nice shiny nail in the coffin of that relationship.

  “But you know what,” Harper said, smiling at her own bright idea, “why don’t you invite Kaia along? I’m sure she’d love to see what a good party looks like around here—and she certainly won’t want to spend the rest of her night in this dump.”

  “Thanks, Harper, that’s a great idea,” Mini-Me enthused. “You’re really the best, you know that?”

  Harper just smiled. “Actually, I do.”

  The girls took off, and Harper watched them as they headed back to their table and collected their stuff. Looked like they were taking the bait. She felt a momentary twinge of guilt at the thought of them wandering through a dark and empty warehouse wondering where the frat boys were and where the keg was hidden—but Harper didn’t believe in rewarding stupidity with leniency. And at least this way they would learn their lesson.

  Maybe.

  Now if only they could drag Kaia along with them. She peered through the crowd to check out Kaia’s table—but Kaia was gone. Home for the night? It seemed unlikely that such a wild party girl—or so she claimed—would have given up on the nightlife so early, pathetic as it was. More likely, she was off somewhere looking for trouble.

  Speaking of which … Adam had been gone forever, and the bathroom just wasn’t that far away.

  So where was he?

  “You know you want me,” Kaia whispered, her breath hot and moist against his ear.

  Adam said nothing, but didn’t—couldn’t—push her away.

  He’d pushed her away in the motel room—and she’d come back.

  He’d pushed her away in the locker room—and she’d come back.

  He’d pushed her away when she accosted him outside the bathroom—and yet she was still here. Still had her arms wrapped around him.

  He was so tired of pushing.

  And she was so beautiful.

  It amazed him—how Kaia and Beth could be so different, how Kaia could be the opposite of almost everything he loved about Beth (and he did love her, he reminded himself, reassured himself). Kaia was hard where Beth was soft, confident where Beth was shy, determined where Beth was so easily deterred. Kaia’s jet black hair, her sparkling green eyes, her icy beauty—they were nothing like the silky blond comfort he found in Beth’s arms.

  So different, and yet—

  And yet he wanted them both so much.

  But Beth would never forgive him.

  “Beth would never have to know,” she whispered, as if she’d read his thoughts.

  Or had he spoken them aloud?

  Adam no longer knew. Kaia’s perfume washed over him, mixing with the smoky air, and he was suffocating, he was dizzy, he was lost in the pounding of the music, the vibrations running through the floor, through their bodies, the thunderous bass. He was lost in the sight of her swollen lips, her wide eyes, her body pressing against his in the darkness.

  He thought of Beth, of the look on her face when she’d walked away from him outside the school, of the sound of her voice through her tears, telling him she didn’t trust him, could never trust him. He thought of what Beth would think, what she would do if she saw him here with Kaia. Thought of proving her wrong, thought of proving her right—

  And then, as Kaia’s hands tightened around his waist, as his chest pressed against hers, as her ton
gue slipped past his lips—he wasn’t thinking about Beth anymore.

  She should never have gone looking for him.

  That was all Harper could think, the only words her mind could muster as she stood frozen, staring at the two of them. Together. Wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Harper wanted to say something—wanted to spit out a venomous one-liner that would make them leap apart in shame. She wanted to shoot them both a murderous look, then shrug her shoulders, spin on her heel, and walk off in disgust.

  A perfect exit.

  Classy.

  Cool.

  Unconcerned.

  But she had no words—she’d lost the power to speak, to stalk away. It was all she could do to keep standing, breathing … watching.

  And so, paralyzed, half-hidden by the darkness—not that either of them would have noticed her had she been lit up by a spotlight—she stayed, wanting nothing more than to turn away But couldn’t.

  Couldn’t stop watching him, his hands running through her hair, his lips pressed against hers, her hands running up and down his back, then their hands clasped, their fingers intertwined—Kaia’s hands, Kaia’s fingers, Kaia’s lips where she had always dreamed that hers would, should be ….

  No.

  Harper took a deep breath and forced herself to turn her back on the couple, on her best friend, on what the night could have been. Turned away.

  She would not cry. No matter what, she would not cry—and she would not stay.

  She pushed her way through the smoky bar and threw herself out into the cool desert night.

  Let him wonder where she’d gone.

  Let him find his own ride home.

  And—she knew he would.

  Hating her, hating him—hating herself for being so weak, for being so pathetic, for not being able to hate him at all—not even now, when the two of them, together, all over each other, was all she could see, Harper walked aimlessly down the empty street.