“I think you should pick up my grandson at eleven - the latest. I’ll be in bed, of course, but Edouard will do an exceptional job of watching over him while you both are...out. Together.” She smiles a wicked one at both me and Sera, and I clench my fists. Fuck this. “You will be at your lunch with Alysha tomorrow, yes?”
Give it up. Just… give up. Stop fighting for things you aren’t meant to have.
Strength has nothing to do with the muscles popping off your body. Strength is the ability to stand in a middle of a storm and hold your ground. Strength is being tossed around, time and time again, and still finding a sliver of a way to get to your feet.
I’m just not strong enough.
“No,” I say, and even I can tell by my voice everything’s all gone to shit. A girl like Sera deserves superheroes; untouchable, invincible men that find it in themselves to save shits like me.
“You. Make sure you’re done...eating.” Mom turns to Sera, and I know this is how it feels right before a grenade goes off, right before the total obliteration.
I hate her, I fucking hate her; how in hell did Jules and me come out of her?
Her face imperceptibly cringes as she looks over Sera’s body. Yeah, they look fucking nothing alike. Where Mom’s body’s rod thin, Sera’s is soft enough that you want to cushion yourself around it all goddamn day. And I hate how Mom is making her feel like that’s wrong. You’re going to pay for that.
“At eleven. You can skip dessert.” And Mom picks up Matty and walks off.
That did not just happen. You’re going to wake up now, MacLaine, any minute now, ’cause this isn’t real.
From my peripherals I can see Sera brace like she’s been hit. And still, still, she waves goodbye to Matty and gives him a smile.
“C’mon, hotshot. Let’s go,” she says, barely a tremble to her voice. Say something, motherfucker! Say something… good, nice. Just say something!
Sera’s latched onto my hand and is pulling me down the stairs. Before I know it, she’s on the passenger side and I’m rounding the car, utterly stunned that my own mother just fucked my chances with what could be the coolest girl on Earth.
“Take me home, Hunt. This was a mistake,” she says when we settle into the car, seat belts on like responsible adults. Something burns inside my chest and on my cheeks. And then I let it go in one breath and squeeze the steering wheel.
I guess I sabotage myself, and I’m a self-fulfilling prophecy. Truth of the matter is, Sera deserves so much more than what I could ever be, and I know that. I know that where it counts, and I’ve shown in every single way that I don’t deserve her. I mean, who the fuck doesn’t say something when their own parent is acting like a total dick?
So I know this is the end, and I’m going to be left wondering what could have happened between Sera and me if my head was screwed on right, if I could be better.
“Please, take me home. I can drive if you’re not up to it.” Sera isn’t pleading, even though the words are there in what she says. No, her voice sounds like steel, strong and final.
“Shut up, Sera. Just shut it,” I snarl, and lean over her to get to the glove compartment. When was the last time I ate today? Figures I couldn’t open my damn mouth, my stupid sugar’s dropping. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I yank out one of my emergency juice boxes, and stab the straw through that tiny aluminum-looking hole thing. “I want to talk about something else. Please,” I beg, sticking the straw back in my mouth and sucking the sweet juice down as quick as I can.
She turns to look at me, and I can’t help but cringe. I don’t know what my face is actually doing, since I’ve lost that sensation right now, but I’m cowering on the inside, where it matters. Sera’s seen me at my weakest, but not my darkest. I don’t want to show her this side of me, I don’t want her to ever see me like this again.
“Something funny?” she asks, and I’m sure she hasn’t missed me strangling the steering wheel with whatever little strength I can muster. Down the juice box. Wait to feel better and the numbness to go away.
Don’t talk – you’ll just sound even dumber than she knows you are.
“Yeah. Just... I really hate that place. Really bad memories. And my sugar dropped again. You have no idea what it’s like,” I tell her, willing her to believe my dumb excuse. If I was worth my balls, I would’ve said something to Mom. I would’ve done something.
Now Matty thinks it’s okay to insult other people, if he even caught the insult to begin with. All because my brain wasn’t working at a hundred percent.
“Look, I’ll take you home, I promise. Just tell me something good.” I toss the juice box in the back seat, ’cause fuck my manners, and noose the hell out of my steering wheel. “Please.”
“I wear nerdy underwear,” she blurts, and I feel my blood come surging through my body like lava. Then
I start laughing, the kind where my abs are getting abused from the movement. I turn to look at her, hands clapped over her mouth until she drops them in her lap and doesn’t look at me.
My heart squeezes in my chest, she’s so cute.
Don’t talk, don’t talk, don’t even think of doing it.
“The question isn’t what kind of nerdy underwear you wear; it’s if you’re wearing them right now.”
Idiot, you fucking idiot. Drive her home, you mongrel.
“Busted,” she says, and turns a beautiful shade of pink. Sera fidgets in her chair, and just that small movement has my dick twitching in my jeans, pushing up against the zipper tab.
“You feel it, don’t you.” Ah, for fuck’s sake, stop opening your mouth. Please!
“Uh... what?” More fidgeting from her side of the car as she squirms in her seat to get more comfortable. She’s nervous around me and I’m not sure why. Not sure why I’m trying to be smooth when
I don’t have enough brain cells left to do so. Yeah, I can call it a pull between us, but if she’s not feeling it, then I’m the fucked up dick left holding the rope.
“I’ll take you home, if that’s what you really want. I’m just asking you to give this a chance.”
“There’s no chance, Hunt. You left me to the Duchess. You don’t even respect me enough to even call me your friend in front of your mom. If I’m not good enough for that, than what good am I as a potential-”
I cut her off, blood hot in my veins, pounding in my skull. No, I’m not going to take anymore shit. From anybody.
“Shit with my mom is complicated. If I kept you close, trust me, she woulda been a hundred times worse. Consider the words she gave you as a light tap to the nose when I’ve been dealt uppercuts my entire life.”
“Who’s Alysha?”
I pull in a breath through my nose, and continue driving. “I will discuss everything with you once we get to the restaurant. I promise.”
“You make a lot of promises,” she says, her mouth set in a stubborn line. Man, to be the guy to kiss that off her lips, make her open for him, well, shit.
“I always keep my promises.” Did you just…?
“Do you promise not to be an asshole for the whole time we’re there?”
“Yeah. I just want to take you out to dinner. Share a meal. One question, though. What kind of nerdy underwear are you wearing?”
She’s shaking her head no in the corner of my eye.
“Sera... I’ll find out one of these days.”
“What?!”
I really don’t understand how she can be so incredulous. Now I’m thinking of what kind of underwear she’s got on and it’s not helping my concentration. “Give this a chance. Whatever this is. Starting with tonight.”
“And if I want you to back off?”
“I’ll do it.”
“What about Matty?”
Yup, just got outvoted for the kid. Sweet deal, MacLaine. “If he asks about you, I’ll tell him the truth.
But you’d want to see him more than you’d want to see me?”
“Absolutely.”
My shit
ty life is now complete.
Chapter 13
I’m going to be shit at this. But I have to try anyway.
I pull back Sera’s chair for her in the restaurant, nearly forgetting to move as I watch her ass connect with the chair and move her closer to the table. Now is really not the best time for my dick to get hard. Or to lose all the saliva in my mouth that has nothing to do with a sugar high, but everything to do with the hot woman in front of me with green fire in her eyes.
I need to use everything I can. I shrug off my hoodie, and have stuffed my phone in my pocket. I don’t get why some assholes, male or female, keep their phones on the table at all times. They’re called manners; do you have them?
Yup, she’s seen my tats, and I swear to whatever God there is, I can feel it, I can feel her eyes running along my forearms, to my inner elbows, to where my shirt stops around my biceps. She’s looking at my skin like she wants to see more of it, and fucking shit, with just one look, I’m completely undone.
I know all about lust. Alysha’s shown me more than her fair share. I know what it’s like to be used, and be part of the using, even if we’re not going to call it that name when we’re thick in the middle of it. I know the staccato beat of my heart, the drugging beat in my blood, and the pulsing ache in my cock when Alysha flashes her eyes at me, or gives a little moan.
I know what it does to my body. I know all about lust.
I know nothing about whatever the fuck Sera is doing to me.
Yeah, there’s some kind of longing there, and I’m half wondering if she’s playing games. But the kind of games she has no idea she’s playing. I think Sera’s a virgin, and has no idea how to be coy or any of that mindfuck women tend to give guys. I want to meet a woman, not play a game of mental chess.
Her eyes say one thing, but the rest of her is cooled off. Hell, I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore. I’m completely out of my depth here.
A waiter about a couple of years younger than me tosses Sera a grin which she returns with closed lips, and greets us. I order two glasses of water, and send out brain waves to the kid to leave my woman alone.
Right, ’cause she wants to be your girl.
My heart’s running the hundred meter dash and all she’s done is stare at my tattoos, and pin me with her eyes. She hasn’t even said a word. And my tongue doesn’t seem to be working – for words, anyway. I want to taste her so, so badly.
“Here you go,” the kid waiter says, and gives Sera another I-want-that-ass look and there’s nothing I can do about it. The guy’s allowed to look, but whatever animal I have inside of me is howling at me to take him down and punch the ever-living shit out of him. All because of one look, all because Sera has no idea what she’s doing, has no idea how very much I want her.
We could be two friends hanging out, instead of me being hers.
I listen to Sera order her meal, then I give mine out to the kid. He sees something in my eyes and I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. Message received.
She’s nervous. She keeps taking delicate little sips of her water, then running her tongue along her lips, only do drink some water again. She’s not looking at me anymore, but seems to be intensely concentrated on the condensation of the glass.
Let’s do easy questions first. Go with the easy stuff. Jesus Christ, how can I make her look me in the eye and forget that I nearly went through the light at the end of the tunnel and she had to take me to the hospital and feed me honey?
Game face, game face.
I can do this.
Maybe.
I pull in a deep breath through my nose and head into a warzone.
“How many nerdy shirts do you own?”
I watch her swirl the water in her mouth, eyes shifting to the side, thinking about my question. Even her thinking face is adorable. I’m so screwed.
“About forty, I think. Why?”
She sets down her glass, hand still holding it tight. The answer comes easily and I feel all my muscles give a little sigh of relief. This might not be so hard after all. I lean forward on the table and feel lightning lick up my spine when Sera stares too long at my arms. I lean closer, watching her, drowning in her look of confusion and utter fascination. She shifts and fidgets in her seat, just like she did in the car.
Sera has no idea what chemistry is outside of a science lab, I think. I can’t wait to be the one to teach her. But now I have nothing interesting to say, and I’m trying really hard to keep my eyes on her face, but I want to look at her curves on her chest, wishing more than anything she’d let me touch her when she’s ready to have me.
And I’m caught on her tank – I know those names.
“The Goonies?” I nod at her shirt. “My favourite movie of all time. I wanted to be Brand when I was a scrawny kid.”
She probably wouldn’t have even given me two looks outside a book she’d be reading in high school. Wow, Sera in high school – a younger, maybe even sweeter version of what she looks like now. Glasses, nose in a book. Curves for days, ass to fucking die for.
“And how old were you when it came out?” she asks, giving me a sheepish grin. The hair that’s piled on top of her head has loosened a bit, with wavy tendrils falling around her ears.
I look down at my plate, wondering if this is a bad thing or not. Shit, she’s probably younger than me. I’m going to have to forget about starting anything with her. Christ, with a face like hers, she’s probably nineteen, twenty. Too young for an old asshole like me.
“I’m twenty-five,” she tells me, and I swear there’s a beacon of light and angels singing the sound of her age. Fucking right. “I love to read, and Supernatural is the best TV show ever created.”
I thought performing root canals with my untrained hands would be easier to do than get her to actually talk to me about mundane shit. The heavy stuff between a man and a woman always seems to cement a relationship, or so I’ve heard, but the everyday crap – well, I didn’t think I’d like listening to her talk so much. Or watch the way her face gets involved in the entire conversation.
“I talk when the silence gets too long. One of my bad habits.”
She’s too fucking adorable.
“I’m twenty-eight. Some days I feel a hundred and nine.” I don’t why that popped out of my mouth.
Way to kill the mood, MacLaine.
“Because of your diabetes?” Sera says it softly, and looks really uncomfortable. But she’s looking at me now, thank God. It still feels like I’ve been shot when the word diabetes comes out of her mouth. It’s been a part of me I tried to keep hidden for so long, that knowing that she knows how bad I get, well, makes me feel like shit.
“Yeah. ’Cause I’m broken in the health department.”
I watch her bite the inside of her cheek. “Do you do this with all your dates? Throw your diabetes at them all the time?”
I’m struck dumb. I want to tell her that she brought it up, but I guess I did want the imaginary violinist on my shoulder to start on the music for my pity party.
Bad dating etiquette. A moron would know that.
“I don’t go on dates,” I say, trying to be honest. Instead of taking the admission for what it’s meant to be, that I’m not really good at this whole dinner conversation thing, Sera wrinkles her nose.
“So you’re basically telling me you’re a walking STD. Nice. I’ll be seeing you.”
What the fucking hell just happened? Sera’s moving her chair back to leave. Panic erupts through my blood, and I’m trying to reach for her hand, while blabbing out some sort of explanation.
“No. Would you let me explain?”
She ends up knocking her glass of water clear on its side, soaking the table cloth, and from the way she jumps in her seat, the front of her jeans.
“Fuck a duck. Good job, Delos,” she curses under her breath, and I watch the kid waiter sweep in to save the day, offering words of comfort instead of doing something about it. Not on my watch, asshole.
I
push back and out of my seat, and round the table, grabbing both her hands. I keep my voice low so that not everyone knows it looks like she peed her pants.
“I’ll take you to the washroom. You can use the dryer. I’ll make them get you another chair, all right?”
I don’t know what my face looks like, but she ends up listening to me and we walk to the washroom together, hand in hand. My palm tingles where it’s connected to hers. I walk back to the table by myself, wishing like this whole mess would just erase itself and I could start over.
I’m insanely attracted to Sera, and I think she’s attracted to me, too. But attraction only starts something, the spark, the embers in a dying fire that can be coaxed back to life. I have to show her I’m more, that I can be the man she wants me to be. But shit, the way she moves, and the way she talks?
I’m a goner.
When she gets back, I admit, “I’m not good at this shit.”
She’d be real dumb if she couldn’t figure that out by now. Not that Sera is dumb. I got a gander at her degree from McGill on one of the far walls that wasn’t plastered with posters at her place. Even if you get a degree in finger-painting, college is tough if you wanna ace shit, and Sera looks like one of those types.
“What?” she asks, settling into her chair gingerly. I cringe, thinking the cold must be really bothering her. Then I start thinking about her sweetness hiding beneath that underwear and I might pass out.
“I don’t take women out to dinner. I don’t do this. I’m awful at it.”
“I’m pretty sure you don’t talk about exes and your sex life on the first date. Which leaves me with only one conclusion.” She taps her finger against her chin. “You don’t like eating with a friend?”
Fucking. Friend. Zoned. Fucking shit. “Is that what we are, Sera? Friends?”
“Yes.” The way she says it makes her sound unsure. There’s hope. “We have some unbreakable vow thing going on now that I have saved your life twice.”
I hate being reminded of the fact that I’d be gone without her. Not that I’m not grateful, just that I’m a shit for not taking care of myself better. I squint at her, backpedalling to the whole friend-zoned shit. “Men and women can’t be friends. It’s a proven scientific fact.”