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She hit my arm. “No, I’m serious! We still have no idea what it is she can’t tell us. We’ve given her the space to come to us when she’s ready, but it’s obviously dangerous. She literally told us someone could be after her. People don’t go after eighteen-year-old girls. Even if a car accident is shady. Not to mention the fact that Rick fucking Avery is involved. She could be in deep shit.”
I shook my head. “None of that matters. We could speculate all day. It’s not important. What’s important is I need to get back to being indifferent to her.”
“Why not fuck someone else?” she asked. “Go into town tonight. Hit up the club and see if you can find someone fun to take you home.”
“Seriously?” I looked at her incredulously. “Honestly, that feels like—”
“If you saycheating, I’ll slap the shit out of you. You and Tempe aren’t together. It isn’t cheating. The fact you feel like it is says more aboutyouthan it doesher. It says youdohave feelings for her. Big ones.”
“I don’t want that. She doesn’t need it. She needs a friend.”
She laughed. “Then why did you take it that far?”
“I don’t know!” I yelled again. “Gah! What the hell was I thinking?”
“Uh, you were thinking you could have the same thing with her that you and I have. We can flirt and be sexual. We can have kinky, nasty sex on our own, and we can have threesomes and foursomes, and act like nothing happened the next day.”
“Yeah… I remember when we first started, you and I fucked every night for like three months straight. We did everything I could think of. I remember flirting with you before school, getting you horny as fuck, and making you suffer all day just to fuck you that night. I didn’t do anything with her that was different than I would have done with you.”
“But itwasdifferent, wasn’t it?” she asked, her voice soft.
My eyes met hers, and I saw the truth in them. A truth I didn’t want to see or accept.
“I don’t want this,” I said.
She shrugged, lifting her hands. “Well, from the sound of it, you entered into a pre-negotiated arrangement. Something more than friends but less than friends with benefits. The question is, can you handle it?”
I thought that over for a few moments. The thought of kissing her again made heat rush across my skin. More than that, it left an ache in my chest I wasn’t familiar with—one I didn’t want to think about.
“No. I don’t think I can. I think tonight was a giant mistake—all of it.”
I’d made her change into that skirt so I could fuck with her after she tortured me the way she did.Fuck, the thought of her tongue gliding up my cock like that would never leave my mind. My balls ached just thinking about it.
The plan was to take her out shopping after creating her new bank account. She hated the money, and didn’t want anything to do with it, but I told her spending some of it would make her feel better. I told her she needed to stop seeing it as money she was paid because her parents died in that accident and start seeing it for what it was.
Money her parents made sure she’d get if the worst happened, so they knew she’d be cared for.
Going out and buying some things they would have enjoyed or bought for her would make her feel more connected to them and less like it was blood money.
The skirt was to be so I could run my hands up her thighs, maybe even touch her pussy through her panties. I’d wanted to turn her on and leave her aching the same way she left me.
That never happened, though. After I went down on her, she tried flirting with me a few times, but I played it off. I had no idea if she knew or not that something was wrong, but if she did, she didn’t act like it.
“You need to talk to her,” Luna said. “Tell her with everything going on with Damian and Asher, she needs one person to feel safe with. Don’t tell her you have feelings for her, or it will confuse her more. Just tell her you want to be her friend, and this is a boundary you need to set.”
I snorted. “Me? A boundary? Luna, wehaveno boundaries. Not a single one of us. This is an extremely unconventional friendship, and we don’t do boundaries. If I try to set one, she’s going to know something’s up.”
She fell back against the couch, sighing. “You’re right. Fuck. Umm…” We were both quiet as we thought. “Wait. I know.” My hopeful eyes met hers. “She told me she might have a crush on you. I’ll talk to her myself. I’ll tell her this is a bad idea.”
“Yeah! If you talked to her about it, she’d listen, and she wouldn’t think I hated her or anything. She’d think it was her idea. Convince her that it might lead her to more confusion. Tell her that when feelings get involved, things get muddy. If she hasanyfeelings for meat all, even a little crush, she needs to stop. Because if that’s the case, then the agreement we made isn’t being honored. I can’t say anything, or she’ll know you told me she has a crush on me.”
“You’re right. Okay. We’ll do that. It makes sense.” She grimaced. “I don’t like this. I feel like it’s dishonest.”
I nodded. “So do I, but it protects us both. Part of me feels like if she has feelings for me, and I have them for her, why not give it a go? But—”
“Damian and Asher,” we both said at the same time.
“Exactly,” I followed up. “With them involved, I don’t trust that I won’t get hurt. And if I get hurt, I might hurt her, and I couldn’t live with that. So, this is for the best. Even if I talked to her honestly and told her everything—”