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A light bulb goes off in my head.
More than anything, Star wants to be seen.
Her ambition is to be more than being a wife and mother, and I’m the last person to fault someone for their ambition. Fact is, I respect her for it. She’s the smartest person I know. There’s no reason she should stop striving simply because she’ll be married. The image pops into my head of her lying on my bed after a good hard fuck, her laptop and books spread across the rumpled sheets. I won’t have her wearing anything more than the crop tops she favors so I can see the long curve of her spine and the smooth globes of her ass jiggle as she shifts around.
Fuck, and now I’m getting hard again.
I’m not a natural at being magnanimous, at putting someone’s needs above my own, but for Star, I’ll try.
Stroking her hair, I start with an admission. “I regret what happened that day in the cafeteria.”
Her brows draw together. “You didn’t seem to have a problem with it. When Monica called you out, you said you don’t get involved in cat fights. Don’t change your tune now, Lucian, simply because you want something from me.”
“I don’t get involved,” I growl. “But I should’ve stood up for you that day. Truth is, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge what you mean to me. How was I going to admit it in front of everyone else? But that day changed everything. It was one thing when I used to bully you. This was not that.”
Her fingernails unconsciously dig into my chest. “Don’t make it sound like you were doing me a favor when you bullied me. You were awful.”
“I stopped short of humiliation.”
“Hmm, I don’t know about that,” she mused.
“But it was different,” I insist, desperate for her to admit to the difference. There was one, dammit. I won’t deny hurting her, but I controlled it. I knew how to modulate it.
She lets out a deep sigh. “I suppose…”
“I used to feel your eyes on me whenever I entered a room,” I continue. “When that stopped…it didn’t feel right. Only once it was gone did I realize what I’d lost.”
Star purses her lips. “You only want to marry me because you’ve come up with this crazy notion that I’m yours.”
“Youaremine and I protect what’s mine, but I realize that I had taken you for granted. I’d ruined what we had, and if anything should happen to you, if I lost you, too, I won’t survive it. I don’t ever want to find out what that’ll be like. Even if you’re a righteous pain in my ass.”
I pause and then admit something aloud I’ve never admitted before. “My father was a pain in my ass, but I’ve never loved anyone more than him. He’s gone and I’d give anything to have one more pain-in-the-ass day with him.”
I look down at her, and she gazes up at me with an expression that’s so sad. Her lips are turned down. Her eyes are luminous with unshed tears.
She lifts herself off me and rolls over to the edge of the bed. With her back to me, she says, “I’m going to check on my mom.”
I place a hand on her forearm. Her skin is so cool to the touch. “I’ll do it.”
“No, she’s my mom,” she insists.
I give her a look to quell her protest and drag her back into the middle of the bed.
I put on sweats, pad across the hall, and softly open the door. Her mother’s asleep, in the same position as we’d left her. I gently shake her awake and confirm that she’s lucid. She’s surprisingly blasé about the fact that there’s a strange man waking her up in the middle of the night, but then again, when you’ve been found blacked out on your living room floor, you probably don’t have enough in you to give a shit.
I give her a drink of water and wait until she falls back asleep. Returning to Star’s bedroom, I notice her dejected profile, shoulders slumped forward and chin dropped to her chest. If anyone knows about the strain of taking care of a sick parent, it’s me. I remember the trips my mother used to take with me and Zoe on, to skate at Rockefeller Center in the winter or out to Coney Island in the summer. Anything to shake off the melancholy.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I tell her.
Her eyes light up with excitement.
Sitting up on sprawled knees, she looks so damn innocent and sensual at the same time. I just want to topple her back into bed, but more sex is not the answer to our problems.
“Where are we going?” she asks, her hands clutching the bed sheets excitedly.
“There’s a bar I go to in Brooklyn. A little hole-in-the-wall in Prospect Heights.”
Her face drops. “I can’t drink.”
