Page 19

NINETEEN

lenni

I tell myself it’s just for a little while. We’ll all hang out and soon Jade will pass out, and then Cam will leave, and I’ll go to bed lonely and maybe a little horny. Just the way it should be, better lonely than heartbroken.

But when we walk into the apartment, the common areas are empty and Jade’s bedroom door is closed. And I just know I won’t see Jade and Sam until morning. Damn. I fell into the trap.

I look at Cam. Well, not a bad person to be trapped with. “You want a drink?”

“I’ll take a beer. Maybe some cheese if you have it.”

“Cheese?”

“You owe me a celebration meal, remember?”

I bite my lip, hoping to rein in my smile. “I’ll search the fridge, but might have to rain check you on that one.”

“Anytime, anywhere.”

I grab two beers from our desolate fridge, vowing to just nurse mine, while Cam makes himself comfortable on the couch. Under his long limbs, the couch looks small and unimpressive. I’m longing to sit close to him, close enough to feel the heat of his body, but I opt for the chair across from him instead.

“Congrats on your win today.” I hold out my beer and we clink bottles.

“Thanks. Did you watch?”

“Of course. You looked good.”

“Just trying to keep up with you.” He takes a drink and watches me over the rim of the beer, his eyes promising that something is about to happen.

I wish I could bottle this feeling and sell it for millions.

“Jade’s a trip,” he says after a minute.

“She doesn’t know when to stop sometimes. I’m sorry about all that stuff she said.”

“About us?”

I nod, looking at his strong fingers wrapped around the beer bottle as a flush creeps up the back of my neck. Cam’s hands have been the subject of scrutiny and wonder by thousands of people; I know enough about receivers to know that. But I can only think about his hands doing one thing, and it isn’t catching a football.

“I didn’t have a problem with it.” Cam leans forward. “You know I’m into you.”

My eyes jump to his. I can’t believe he went there already. “Cam, I . . . I mean, you said . . . ” I take a breath and try again. “I thought we were just friends.” I’m such a liar. Like hell we’re just friends.

“We were.”

Raw desperation blooms inside me. Do I even have the strength to pretend I don’t love what he’s telling me? “Okay, but putting all feelings aside... ”

His lip curls into a lopsided smile. “Why would we do that?”

“Because that—feelings—that’s not how I make decisions.”

“That’s how everyone makes decisions.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” He looks unconvinced. “Fine. Feelings aside . . . what?”

“I don’t date athletes.”

“Because of Reeve.”

“This goes back long before Reeve.”

He cocks his head, looking at me like he’s waiting for the punch line. “So...you don’t date athletes, but you’ll sleep with them?”

My breath catches in my throat. Maybe it’s not an entirely hurtful, inappropriate, and overly personal question, but that’s damn well how it feels. “I—” Shame heats the back of my neck. “Maybe you should leave,” I hear myself say, too surprised to challenge him. I’m disappointed more than offended. Because I think I just figured out Cam’s one of those guys who’s sweet as sugar until you reject him, and then suddenly you’re a fat, ugly whore who he would never have fucked anyway.

“Hold on, Lenni, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick here.”

“Too bad, that’s exactly what you’re being.” I stand up and hold out a hand for his beer. “I’ll throw that away for you.” I’m too stung to look him in the eye. And too embarrassed because he’s exactly right; I was willing to sleep with someone I didn’t know or respect. I don’t like that about myself.

Cam sets his beer on the side table out of my reach and instead takes the hand I’m holding out. “Give me a break here.” His voice is low and silky. I should pull my hand away because the heat of his skin against mine is weakening my resolve already, but I don’t. “I like you, and you just told me it’s never going to happen because I play football. So forgive me for trying to understand why Reeve was fair game.”

“I never liked Reeve!” I yank my hand free. “I just thought he might be able to help me get over some...hang-ups I had. Instead, he reminded me why I stay far away from guys like you.”

He studies me. “Someone hurt you.”

“That’s right,” I say sharply.

Distress flashes in his eyes, but he swallows it down. I watch the smooth movement of his Adam’s apple in his throat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.” He looks up at me, trapping me in the swirl of gold and yellow and brown of his eyes. “Will you sit down?”

I hesitate, and he probably thinks I’m unsure, but it’s really just that his face is so mesmerizing I can’t stop staring.

“Fine. I’ll leave. But let me say one thing first. Whatever that asshole did to you, he did it because he was an asshole, not because he was an athlete. And I’m going to prove to you we’re not all dicks.”

God, I want him to be right. “That was two things.”

Cam opens his mouth to say something, but then we both hear it, a loud banging coming from Jade’s room. Our eyes meet and I think we realize at the same instant it’s the unmistakable sound of a headboard hitting a wall over and over and over.

We both laugh. My cheeks are on fire. Jade is killing me tonight with the number of times she’s made things awkward.

“Damn,” Cam says. “I would’ve thought she was down for the count.”

“I’ve been her roommate for two years. Jade can always rally.”

Right on cue, the moaning starts.

“Oh my god,” I mutter, dropping my head into my hands.

Cam is relaxed on the couch, looking amused and totally unfazed. I guess living in a house full of football players means this is just the usual background noise. And sure, I’ve heard Jade’s, um, sounds of pleasure many times—Sam’s a man of many talents, as Jade says—but I’ve never had to listen while sitting across from the guy I wish I was banging.

“You need another beer?” I ask him, though I can see perfectly well that his beer is barely half gone. “Come on, let’s get you one,” I say before he can answer.

He follows me obediently into the kitchen, which is only a few extra feet from the bedrooms, but I’ll take what I can get.

“So,” I say, “how’d you leave things with your mom?”

He scrunches up his face. “You know, I’d really rather not talk about my mother given the current atmosphere in this apartment.”

I laugh. “That’s fair. Would you?—”

That’s when I’m interrupted by the dirty talk.

The headboard I can handle. Moaning? Fine, I’ll live. But the words I hear coming from my best friend’s bedroom right now shock me into silence. Cam and I stare at each other. I can’t make out everything she’s saying, but here and there certain words come through crystal fucking clear. I put my hand over my mouth as a grin spreads slowly across Cam’s face.

“God damn,” he says. “She watches porn, doesn’t she?”

I just shake my head and try to escape into a fantasy wherein I seek revenge on Jade in the most embarrassing ways possible.

A look crosses Cam’s face that I know is trouble. “Come on,” he says, moving toward Jade’s bedroom.

“What? What are you doing?”

“Shhh. Come on.”

“Cam, no!” I reach for his arm to stop him, but he’s stronger, and he slips out of my grip, instead closing his hand around my wrist and pulling me behind him.

Now I’m left to decide whether having his hand on my body is worth the trauma of hearing my best friend getting banged out by her boyfriend. Cam’s fingers are firm around my wrist, and I’m close enough to smell him; woodsy and fresh with a dark, vaguely familiar note that makes me throb between my thighs. Yep, totally worth the trauma.

Cam stops outside Jade’s bedroom door and puts his finger to his lips. I want to be as far away from that door as possible, but the roguish look on his face, that rough finger against his soft mouth...lord, it could not be any sexier. I don’t move.

He puts his ear to the door. Jade is becoming more and more explicit. I alternate between trying not to hear her and trying not to laugh at Cam’s facial expressions as he listens. Sometimes he nods in approval, other times his eyes go wide and he shoots me a scandalized look.

Then we hear Jade say the word “thickness.” We look at each other. A laugh builds inside me. Then Cam mouths it slowly, thickness . And I’m dying.

I turn and flee, clapping my hand over my mouth to stifle the guffaw, which erupts instead as a snort. Behind me, I hear Cam chuckle. I shove my face into a pillow to muffle the laughter that I’m powerless to stop.

Suddenly, I realize Jade’s bedroom is silent. Shit! I turn around and grab Cam’s hand, trying to pull him away. Clearly, he doesn’t care if he’s caught with his ear to the door, but I do. Come on ! I mouth furiously, giddy with laughter and nerves.

He takes his time but gives in to me. I drag him out the door and down the back steps where, outside, in the cool night air, I can finally breathe.

For a minute, we just stand there recovering under the floodlights that illuminate the back of the building. Then we look at each other and start laughing again.

“I think we need to walk that off,” I say, starting down the path that weaves through the apartment complex.For such cheap housing, the grounds are surprisingly nice, with tall evergreens, picnic tables, and carpets of thick green grass.

Cam glances at me. “I’m sorry about the Reeve thing.”

“No, don’t be. I took your question the wrong way. I’m too sensitive sometimes.”

“I don’t think so,” he says mildly.

I sigh, breathing out the stress of the last few hours. Sometimes, when I least expect it, I feel completely at ease with Cam. “I’m sorry this night has been so weird.”

“I like weird.”

“Yeah, you weren’t exactly clutching your pearls over Jade’s dirty mouth. Can I assume you’ve heard it all before?”

The corner of his mouth twists. “Lenni Crawford, are you fishing for details about my sex life?”

“No,” I say quickly, although I’m actually dying to know what he’s into. Probably some crazy, advanced stuff I’ve never even heard of. Once again, my mind conjures up a vivid image of him shirtless in bed, his skin damp with perspiration, his muscles straining with effort...I swallow and bite down on the inside of my lip. “But since you brought it up,” I say, emboldened.I look over at him. It’s much darker here, with only a bit of light from the post lights scattered intermittently among the grounds.

“What do you want to know?”

Everything. Anything. “Who’s the last person you had sex with?” I blurt out.

“That’d be my ex.”

“You haven’t been with anyone since?”

“Are you calling me a loser?”

“No, I’m just surprised.”

“By now you should know better than to be surprised when you’re wrong about me.”

“What about Alexis?” Hearing the question in the air has me suddenly nervous. It’s not even Alexis, it’s everything she represents.

“Truman?” he scoffs. “Fuck no. You crazy?”

“What? She’s pretty. And she clearly wants you.”

“Yeah, she’s also annoying, rude, vain, and can’t take a hint.”

“Jeez, you don’t need to be so uppity,” I joke, totally relieved. “Such a high bar you have for a one-night stand.”

“Yeah, yeah. You sure like talking about sex, don’t you?” He slides his gaze sideways to meet mine.

I can barely look at him when he says sex. That word rolling off his perfect lips makes me ache from somewhere deep inside. I make a noncommittal noise, deeply regretting where I’ve steered this conversation.

“Let’s turn it back on you.”

“I don’t have sex,” I say quickly. I feel his eyes on me. “I’m not a virgin. I just don’t, you know, hook up.”

“Okay,” he says. “What about love?”

I let out a short laugh. “You’ve managed to find a topic I know even less about than sex.”

“Shame, I was hoping you might know more than me. What’s this over here?” He steps off the path toward a small piece of land half hidden behind some evergreen trees.

“I think it used to be a garden.”

“Should we check it out?”

I look dubiously at the walled-in mess of overgrown plants and what I think used to be a gravel path. “Sure.” I’ll follow him anywhere right now.

The garden is darker than the rest of the grounds, but a few crooked stake lights still illuminate what’s left of the narrow path. Cam slides behind me as we step over rocks and weeds. When I move just so, I can feel the warmth of his hand hovering at my back, ready to catch me if I stumble. I pretend not to notice. I pretend it doesn’t make me feel safe.

The path clears after a few yards, and Cam falls into step next to me, but the tight tangle of plants on either side forces us close. Butterflies flutter in my chest.

“You know what this place reminds me of?” he asks.

“Totally.” This is a far cry from the manicured sunken garden on campus where we first met, but something about the atmosphere feels just the same.

“Must be something about the light.”

“And the company.”

He looks at me and nods. “And the company.”

He’s right, it’s the light. The color of his eyes and the way the light sharpens the lines and curves of his face are just as they were that night. I need to stop staring at him. “You know, it was never that I forgot you, I just didn’t recognize you. Back then you didn’t seem like a...”

“Asshole jock?” he offers.

“Something along those lines.”

“I’ll ignore you implying that now I am an asshole jock,” he teases. “So what did I seem like?”

The perfect guy. But I can’t tell him that. Then he places a hand gently in the curve of my waist and steers me around a patch of mud. I can. “The perfect guy.”

He snorts. “I knew you were high that night.”

“Come on, like you don’t know every girl on campus takes one look at you and sees her dream man.”

He ignores this and catches my wrist, stopping me. “So what changed? Now you won’t even consider going out with me.”

“Me, I guess.”

“You don’t seem different. This feels just like it did back then.”

He’s right. There’s still an easiness between us, a feeling that finally, we can stop pretending and just be. But I am pretending. I’m pretending that the way he looks at me doesn’t weaken my heartbeat. I’m pretending that everything inside me doesn’t quicken and fire when he says my name. I want to be the girl he met years ago, the one that felt so certain her awful past had no bearing on her future. She wasn’t afraid of what she felt for Cam. But I’m not that girl; I’m terrified.

“I don’t chase my feelings anymore, I chase goals. I need to stay focused on my plans.”

“I respect that. But you said you don’t date athletes, not that you don’t date. Can I ask why we’re on your shit list?”

I hesitate, not wanting to insult him when he’s been nothing but kind to me. “Okay. But don’t go getting all offended.”

He puts his hands up in surrender.

“Here’s what I think. Athletes have their big dreams, and you can’t see beyond them. Your team always comes first. And everything else—friends, relationships—is secondary.” I’m not ready to tell him that this is a theory borne out of experience. After I was filmed by that football player, there was a code of silence among his team; not one of them was about to give the others up. “And I think that love should always come first.”

I’m startled to find him laughing. “Funny, I’m listening for the irony in your voice, but I’m not hearing it.”

“Irony?”

“You just finished telling me how you need to focus on your goals and nothing else. But you’re shitting on athletes who do the same thing? Irony.”

“It’s not the same thing! I’m talking about guys who put the game above their girlfriends. I stay out of relationships so I don’t have to put anyone second.” But when I say the words out loud, I feel like I’m lying to him.

“Not all athletes are like that,” he says. “Not even close.”

“Have you ever put love ahead of the game?”

“No.” His voice dips low. “I’ve never been in love.” I stare at him, caught by surprise and the unguarded look in his eyes. “We have more in common than you thought.”

I force myself to look away. This is getting dangerous. “I guess there’s more we don’t know about each other than we do.”

“I know enough to want more.”

“More of what?”

“The girl I met that night.” Something flickers in his eyes. “The girl who wrote mystery stories.”

I cringe. I can’t believe I ever told him about the stupid fiction I used to write. But he smiles at my reaction. I wonder what it would be like to see myself the way he does. “Why her?”

He looks thoughtful. “She was genuine, that was the first thing. Sweet. Real. A girl who follows her heart wherever it leads.”

I feel a brief tug of sadness. That’s exactly who I wanted to be.

“You were comfortable with not fitting in, and that energy was just...I don’t know, hard to not get sucked into. It made me want to see where your life would take you.” Humor flashes in his eyes. “And that girl didn’t seem interested in judging me without knowing me.”

Abashed, I offer him an apologetic smile. “Yeah, she was really something.”

“You know what else she was?”

I look at him.

“Beautiful.”

I roll my eyes. “I was fat.” Actually, I liked the way I looked. But I knew what guys said about me.

“Fat? Are you crazy?”

“I was.”

“You were beautiful, Lenni.”

Without my permission, my body reacts to the compliment, nerves firing like they’ve just woken up from a long, icy winter. “I was chubby.”

“And you were beautiful.”

I want to believe him, dangerous as it is. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not allowed to think you’re beautiful?” He leans toward me.

“When you’ve only ever dated a steady stream of flawless girls?”

A flash of annoyance quirks his lips. “I dated those girls for a reason.”

“Which you already told me wasn’t love. So I assume it was attraction.”

“I liked those girls because they were the answer every time someone looked at me and wondered, ‘What kind of man is he?’ That was all I wanted from a girlfriend.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I was hiding behind something with them, being what I thought people expected me to be, I guess.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter now. Point is, you can’t tell me who I’m allowed to be attracted to. I know what I see when I look at you.”

I stare off to the side because I can’t meet his eyes. “I can’t see what you do.”

He leans closer, infusing my senses with his scent. “I’m sorry if only size-zero blondes do it for you. I guess you don’t see the way guys practically break their necks watching you walk by in class, even when you’re wearing those big, frumpy outfits you like. I guess you don’t see the way I can’t stop myself from staring at you.” His voice is deep and throaty, and I can feel it skittering across my skin. “Or that brown hair and your perfect goddamn lips blot out the whole rest of the world.”

I want to run away from him, from the pull he has on me. But I need to know if his words are the truth. I look at him and his finger comes carefully under my chin.

“I’ve never been more attracted to anyone in my life,” he says quietly.

Our faces are inches apart. And either I believe him, or I just don’t care because his proximity and that single finger on my face have my body so completely alive I can’t think straight.

His eyes drop to my mouth. My breath goes out of me and I feel myself give in. I need him to kiss me.

His mouth meets mine, and the pleasure of it shocks me. His touch is soft but certain. He glides his tongue along my lips, and I inhale, letting him in. His hand curls around the back of my neck to pull me closer but he doesn’t need to, I’m already sinking into him, the feel of his tongue like a magnet drawing me in.

My body is humming. No, burning. No, melting completely under his touch and the taste of him. His scent up close is spicier, disorienting in the very best way.

I don’t remember moving, but somehow I find my back pressed against the rough stone wall. The kiss grows deeper. The rocks scraping my back should hurt, but I only feel where Cam touches me. He makes a sound against my mouth, some breathy mix of a sigh and “Lenni.” My name on his lips makes me shudder.

My hands seek out the steadiness of his body, settling on his shoulders. I feel in his muscles and the sound of his breathing that he’s holding back. Somewhere in that realization, doubt falls away and for this instant I believe everything he’s told me.

His lips move to my jaw, my neck, setting off fires everywhere they touch. I breathe him in and drop my head back. And when my eyes finally open to the night sky, the whole world has changed.