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I pull out of the parking lot onto a crosswalk-striped campus street. She crosses her legs and props her hands on her knee. She looks at me, and I can feel her expectation hanging in the shadows.
“So that’s kind of weird, right?” she asks me, in a chipper, prodding tone. “Aren’t you going to tell me why you didn’t you date before four months ago?”
My throat stings with the question. Four months. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. I wish I had met Cleo before. I want to have her thoroughly, and now I’m worried that there won’t be time.
I keep my feelings off my face, because, again—she doesn’t need to know this shit. I twist my lips into a smug smile and try to project the Kellan Walsh she thinks she knows. “Maybe I was in a committed relationship.”
Her pretty face twists skeptically. “Were you?”
I laugh. “That’s Kellan business, don’t you think?”
I turn into the narrow drive that leads around the side of the huge, brick library building.
“I thought we’re doing business together,” Cleo replies.
“Are you committing to that?”
She hmphs.
“That’s what I thought.”
I find a spot on the second level of the parking deck and notice the thought of Cleo doing business with me has taken some of the tension out of my shoulders. More and more, I think she’s exactly right for what I have in mind. It gives me peace.
I walk around the front of the car and open her door. She sashays out, her black shawl fluttering behind her as her boots click against the cement. Like every time I’m near her, it’s a struggle not to touch her in some way.
She turns around to face me as I shut the passenger’s side door. “Were you?” she asks, hand on her hip. She looks like a superhero with that ridiculous long shawl and those boots. “Were you with someone before? Honesty, Kellan. If you want to work with me...” She licks her soft, pink lips. My cock twitches.
I trail my hand down her lower arm, catching her by the wrist and tugging her lightly toward a covered breezeway that adjoins the parking deck to the side of the library.
“I was,” I say as I slide my fingers through hers. It’s not a lie—exactly. “I was always with someone else before.”
Sometimes several someones. The relationships were always regular; mutually beneficial and bordering on official at times. So much neater and tidier than what I’m doing now with Cleo. So much more... sound—in every way.
She frowns at my answer, as if she’s turning it over in her head and isn’t sure what to make of it. Then she looks down at our joined hands. “For a domineering prick, you’re pretty big into hand-holding, aren’t you?”
I grin, and quickly roll my lips together. “You’re mine for now,” I murmur to the top of her dark head. She tries to pull ahead of me, but I ignore that fact and focus on the warmth of her hand in mine, on her small-but-curvy body. I tighten my grip and force her to break her fast stride. She looks back at me, and I bring her hand to my lips. “I want to keep you close.”
She snorts and increases her pace until she’s dragging me behind her. I’m surprised to find I’m feeling... lighter. The weight that seemed ever-present on my shoulders seems to have drifted off—at least until I see the mail bin at the top of the library’s brick steps.
Emptiness yawns inside me: a crushing need for what I can’t have.
As Cleo flounces to the glass doors, I drop another half-step behind. I slide the post card out of my back pocket and reach around behind her to toss it inside.
She spins, a blur of black fabric to match her raven hair. “Did you just mail a letter?” she demands. It’s the same tone she uses for everything: some funky blend of incredulity and amusement—as if she’s ready and waiting to comment on any toe I put out of place.
I murmur, “Kellan business.”
Pain cries through me, and I tell myself to try to forget about the postcard. After all, there is no address on it: no mailing, no return. It, like the few others I’ve written since May, will be discarded.
And still, the words echo in my mind.
I’m sorry, Sloth.
I’m so sorry.
“HOLY SHIT, I THINK I GET IT!”
I give Kellan my surprised bug eyes, which probably scare the crap out of him, because we’re sitting thigh-to-thigh on a narrow, padded bench in one of those little closet-rooms-for-rent inside the library.
