“Stop.” Beth holds out her hand. “You’re a good guy and you don’t want to think you could have done something not good, okay?
What we did wasn’t bad. It wasn’t wholesome, but it wasn’t bad. Don’t read anything more into it.”
Beth’s beautiful blue eyes are pleading with me. Pleading! She wants me to agree with her.
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bolt last night?”
The front door opens and, with narrowed
eyes, Scott glares at me from the other side of the storm door. Beth glances at him over her shoulder and holds his gaze. He walks away, leaving the front door open. A knot forms between my shoulder blades. Not good.
“You should go,” says Beth.
Probably, but I can’t. Not with Beth telling me that I don’t like her. Not when she honestly believes it. “Go out with me again—a real date this time.”
“What?”
I climb the three steps and sit next to her. We were so close last night. Skin against skin.
She’s inches from me, but it feels like miles.
My hand becomes heavy with the need to
touch her, comfort her. I raise it. Put it down.
Come on, I had no problems touching her last night. I raise it again and place my hand over hers.
Under my fingers, Beth stiffens. My heart beats once against my chest, creating an ache. I don’t want her to hate my touch. “We’ve started everything ass backwards. I like you.
Let’s see what happens.”
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“Date you?” she asks.
“Date me.”
“Like friends…” Beth scrunches her face in disgust “…with benefits?”
I can almost feel her body under mine again and I shake away the memory. I’m not going to prove to her I like her if we have a repeat performance of last night. “No. Friends who go out together. I pay. You smile. Sometimes we kiss.”
She raises a skeptical eyebrow on the word kiss and I immediately backtrack. “But we date first—for a while. Friends who like each other and want to date.”
“I never said I liked you.”
I chuckle and a warm tingle enters my blood when she gives that small, peaceful smile.
“You haven’t said you hate me.”
“Friends who date,” she says as if she’s
trying to find the hidden meaning in the phrase.
“Friends who date,” I repeat and squeeze her fingers.
Beth tenses and withdraws her hand. “No.”
She pads down the stairs on bare feet. “No.
This isn’t the way things work. Guys like you don’t date girls like me. What angle are you HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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playing? Is this about the dare?”
Her words cause me to flinch, but they
aren’t a surprise. Last night, I pushed her too far. I showed her no respect. She has no reason to believe me, yet I want her to. “No. The dare is done.”
“Because you won last night?”
No, I didn’t. The dare required that Beth and I stay at the party for an hour. We barely lasted fifteen minutes. “It’s over, Beth. I don’t play people I care about.”
Myriad emotions cross her face, as if she’s wrestling with God and the devil. “You could be playing me. If this is the dare, just tell me.”
“I did tell you. The dare is over.” I told Lacy that no one gets hurt on my dares. Especially in this one. How could I be so blind? I thought Beth walked away from the trust fall because she wanted to hurt me. I thought she wanted to watch my team lose. Wrong. Beth didn’t jump because she doesn’t trust and, because of this dare, I’ve ruined any trust she could have had in me.
“Did you win then?” Beth stubbornly holds on to the dare. “Were you dared to make out with me?” The hurt gives way to panic. “You HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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fucking asshole, you did play me, didn’t
you? Does everyone at school already know?
Are you here for bonus points? Try to fuck the girl, tell your friends, then convince her you want more?”
“No!” I shout, then remind myself to rein it in. I created her doubt when I accepted the dare. “No. What happened between us last night wasn’t about any dare. I didn’t plan it and I would never tell anyone.”
“So, I’m a secret. We’ll date in private, but not in public. No thanks.”
Damn. I can’t win. I rub my hand over my
head. “I want to be with you. Here. At school.
Wherever. I didn’t play you. Just trust me.”
Beth angles her body away from me. Trust must be the ugliest word in her vocabulary.
Desperate to make everything right, I blurt out, “Ask me for anything and I’ll do it. Trust me with something. I’ll prove to you I’m worth trusting.”
She assesses me: Nikes first, blue jeans, Reds T-shirt, then my face. “Will you take me into Louisville again?”
The nausea I fought all afternoon returns.
Anything but that. “Beth…”
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“I won’t disappear again. I need you to