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“Stop apologizing,” she murmurs, snapping me out of the moment. “I wanted to go with you. You don’t need to be responsible for me the way you are for everything and everyone else…I will say this, they’re actually worse than you described them. Now I know why Brian is so troubled.” She presses her toes into my abs and I swallow down a groan. “I have no idea how you turned out so well.”
“They definitely did their best to screw us up, but my brother started using because of a girl.”
Her flashing eyes, burning with curiosity, scan my face. She sits up abruptly, takes her feet back, and crosses her legs. I instantly miss them. “How?”
Exhaling tiredly, I decide on the abridged version. “Brian was always the perfect son. Amazing swimmer, nationally ranked. Great water polo player. Academic highest honors––you know, all that. Sophomore year a girl named Jessie Turner transferred in from Santa Cruz. Gorgeous, best-looking girl in school and that’s saying a lot. She ran with a really fast crowd––already doing eight balls as a sophomore.”
Alice’s eyes get even bigger.
“Yeah. Played the broken damsel part like a fucking Oscar winner. Brian fell hard for her. He started doing coke to party. She was always taunting him into shit. Saying he didn’t have the balls for it…anyway, it worked. He started experimenting. Started cutting school. Got kicked off the water polo team for not showing up for a game. Then he won a swim meet and tested positive. My parents sent him straight to rehab…while Brian was in rehab, Jessie overdosed and died.”
A gasp has me looking up into Alice’s soft brown eyes. I won’t lie. In the past, I’ve used women as a refuge from all the responsibility weighing on me as much as they used me for their own self-interest. It was a perfect arrangement. The problem is the high-flying vibes only lasted until the following morning. Then I’d wake up alone and find myself scraping bottom again. But Alice? It’s not her body that gives a man a soft place to land––it’s her eyes.
“He went off the rails. Broke out of rehab and went on a three-month bender that had my parents picking him up in a drug den in San Francisco. After that it was just more of the same. He never even got his high school diploma…”
She takes my hands in hers, tugs on my fingers the same way I tugged on her toes, her gaze cast down on where we touch.
“I was thirteen and the first lesson I learned about love was that it could ruin your entire life.”
“Do you still believe that?” She looks up then, and it takes everything I’ve got not to kiss her.
“No.”
Not since I met you, the words form in my head. And that’s where they stay.
Alice
A chill wakes me abruptly out of a deep sleep. Confused, I scan the room until I’m reminded that I’m at Reagan’s. In his bedroom. Alone in his bed. Then it all comes back to me. The horrible dinner. The heart-to-heart. After the talk we were both exhausted. He put on Dead Pool 2, and we fell into a comfortable silence. The kind you rarely find and often yearn for. I only made it through the opening credits.
I wish I knew how to keep some emotional distance between us. Which is definitely in my best interest because the mixed signals haven’t stopped. I can’t decide if he’s just not in to me, or he can’t make up his mind. Neither of which do me any good. And between the sweet gestures and the heartfelt talks, he makes it impossible not to fall for him. After last night I am one thoughtful action away from hitting ground zero in L.O.V.E.
The cable box flashes 2:59. It’s creeping me out to be in this massive bed alone so I go in search of him. At the end of the empty, dark, never ending hallway, I hear the sound of splashing water and head for the patio. Across the living room, I spot him through the open sliding doors. The water churns and foams as he swims the length of the pool, each stroke faster than the last. It looks like someone is working out some serious aggression.
Barefoot, I shuffle outside onto the patio at the same time he hits the edge. “Reagan.” My voice is raspy from lack of use, but he hears me all the same because he comes up sucking in huge gulps of air and looks over his shoulder.
I expect to find frustration on his face. Maybe a teasing smirk? That I would understand––it’s practically his signature. Even exhaustion would make sense. What I don’t expect to find is lust, unmistakable, undisguised lust on his face. For me.
His hot stare slowly travels from my toes to my face. Almost instantly I’m engulfed in heat. An aching emptiness develops between my thighs. And my nipples perk up. It’s been so long I almost forgot I had nipples. I literally go from barely awake to fully turned on in less than a second…from a single glance. God help me. What would happen if he actually touched me?
