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But shit was different now. Every little fucking thing. Including this feeling of uncomfortable self-consciousness I'd never known a single day in my life. Not until the moment I wrapped my car around a utility pole and crushed my leg.
I stalled for too long, and Lennon noticed my hesitation as she sat back on her heels. She chewed her lip with consideration as I dropped my hands to my waist and fumbled with the button and fly on my pants. Fuck, my hands were shaking—shit must've been contagious. I was scared, literally petrified, of her seeing my leg. Scared of what she'd think, say, do. God, why I even fucking cared, I didn’t know, but Idid. I didn’t want her pity. I didn’t want her staring eyes to dissect every leftover piece of my broken body and decide she didn’t like it after all.
“You don't have to be worried about me, you know,” she said, spearing through the negative barrage of bullshit in my head.
Startled, I looked up to find understanding written plainly on her beautiful face.
“I'm the last person on the planet who would be bothered by it.”
Well, fuck.
I cleared my throat, then sucked my teeth before saying, “I know that's supposed to make me feel better, but it's not working.”
“Then, I'll turn around and close my eyes,” she said while doing exactly that. With her back to me, she lifted her hands and placed them over her face. “Okay?”
My heart jumped straight into my throat as I stared at her back, covered with the shirt I hadn’t particularly cared for until she put it on. The inspiration I'd felt before when we fucked was back, knocking against my brain in melodies and rhymes as an unfamiliar warmth spread over my skin and stretched inward to my veins and nerves and bones.
I was done for.
I knew it, and I didn't like it.
But, man …
I didn't hate it either.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lennon
I am lying in bed with Dylan freakin’ Pierce.
The thought struck hard and swift as Dylan reached up to the light switch beside the bed and flipped it. The room was shrouded in a soft dark, lit only by the city beyond the windows. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the absence of light, and I sighed at the sense of instantaneous comfort of being in the darkness. Details I couldn't see clearly before came to me now.
The gauged piercings in his earlobes.
The hoop resting against his right nostril.
The scar through the tattoos on his shoulder.
My uninhibited actions throughout the night had surprised me, and I wasn't bound to stop now. So, I reached out and touched that scar, ran my fingertips over the jagged line of puckered flesh that went all the way to his elbow. His head rolled against the pillow to stare at me in the dark. I knew he couldn't see me the way I saw him now, but I still smiled apologetically.
“Sorry,” I said, laying my hand on his chest.
“It's fine.”
Time was running out. I was exhausted; he was too. But the morning would come, and this would be over, and there was still so much I wanted to know. So much I wanted to ask and say. He didn't know I was a fan, nor did I plan on telling him. This was my night to be lucky, the one where I could be anyone I wanted to be, and I didn't want it marred by him knowing who I was, what was wrong with me, or how I lived my life.
The accident had been public knowledge though. The whole world knew the day Dylan Pierce crashed his car on the Long Island Expressway, and the whole world worried he'd lose more than just his leg.
But I had been more than just worried. I'd been terrified out of my freakin' mind, and I needed for him to at least know that.
“I'm sorry to bring it up, but …”
His heart began to pound beneath my hand. I swallowed and questioned if this was a mistake.
Still, I continued, “I remember hearing the news and being scared shitless that you weren't going to make it.”
Dylan's jaw clenched before he muttered, “And?”
