AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His smile isn’t helping his case if he’s trying to convince me to release him. Those dimples are criminal.
I force his head down so I can kiss them. Just one more time, but once my lips make contact with his skin, the dizzying spell takes over. I find his mouth and lock him against me as the insatiable need overwhelms me once more. He groans into our kiss, and a surge of desire fires straight through me when he surrenders to his own lust.
We kiss for several more minutes, touching and exploring each other with an urgency born of our silent understanding that once we leave this fantasy, reality may prevent a return. Can you wring a lifetime with a person from a single moment?
It’s already too soon when we have to stop for air. I’m still not ready to let him go, and he seems hesitant as well. I run my hands along his arms as if it will somehow keep him here forever.
“What did you want for your future?” I ask, enjoying the hard, warm contours of his arms. “Before the accident. If none of it had happened, what were your dreams? Your goals?”
His gaze lowers, and I try not to get distracted by the effect of his long lashes from this angle. I know people who spend a fortune to look half as beautiful as he does while he’s thinking.
“I didn’t,” he says finally.
“You didn’t what?”
“Dream.”
He pushes up in an abrupt shove, and I miss his body against mine even before he’s fully separated from me. I watch in disappointment as he reaches for the towel and hands it to me. I guess I should clean up, but it feels wrong to wipe away what just happened between us, like we’d be erasing something we’ll never get back. Plus, I don’t like his answer to my question. At all.
“Come on. That can’t be true,” I say. “You were an all-state linebacker. You’re telling meteenage youdidn’t have dreams of the big leagues? Some fast car and hot model on your arm?”
He shrugs, and I reluctantly follow his lead when he tosses me my shorts and top. I don’t suppose I’d be able to convince him to spend the night in my room…
“Not really, no,” he says. “That was my dad’s dream.”
By the serious expression on his face, I believe him. Weird. Whether it was music or football, I would have sworn the cocky player I knew in high school imagined himself in a glamorous world that revolved around him.
“Your father made it sound like the sun, moon, and stars orbited around you,” I say.
“My father hated me.”
I wince and study him as he straightens to his feet and starts toward the hall. “I just have to clean up quick and grab my clothes from the bathroom. Then you can use it.”
“Okay,” I say, staring after him. I want to get lost in the naked image moving down the hall, but now I’m disturbed by his confessions.
His father hated him? That can’t be true. Almost every memory I have of Ben Haverford involves him bragging about his amazing children. Come to think of it,everymemory involves him bragging about something.
I watch Tristan disappear into the bathroom, my heart heavy as I rewrite everything I thought I knew about their relationship. Sure the two of them argued all the time, but what teenager and parent didn’t? At least they weren’t throwing things at each other and disappearing for days like in my house. Most of my teenage memories with the Haverfords involved giggling with Kim and trying to manufacture run-ins with Tristan every chance I got. Not once do I recall anything close to hatred in that house prior to the accident.
It broke my heart when the tragic event also broke my virtual family. I always assumed the Haverfords disowned Tristan out of anger over the loss and betrayal of a cherished son. Could it be more complicated?
“No one thought for a second it might not have been me,”he’d said.
Even his own parents?
Tristan is adjusting his sweatpants around his hips when I reach the bathroom door. He looks over, and I swallow a stab of pain at the troubled expression on his face. Is he upset about the memory of his father? What we just did? Something—everything—else?
One thing’s for sure, he’s embedded in my soul again.
“I thought of another thing you’re not,” I say with a smile.
His conflicted expression morphs into confusion. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“Bad at sex.”
His grin alone makes that impossible.
I wake with a start. Heart racing, I scan for the threat, only to find an empty room. Light streams in from under the bathroom door across the hall, and I check my phone to see it’s almost three o’clock.
