She shrugged. “It sucked actually. At least I didn’t have to defend your lifestyle and why you were sitting with another girl.” She scowled as a blush heated her cheeks. “I didn’t want her to look at you that way, I just . . . I mean, I hate you—you get that, right?”
“Do you?” My heart thudded slowly in my chest, waiting for her answer. “Do you really hate me so much?”
She blinked and looked down at her hands. “I want to.”
“You want to hate me, but you don’t.”
She nodded.
“So that must mean you kind of like me?”
“What is this, middle school?”
“I wouldn’t know, that was a long time ago for me, but for you—hey, wasn’t that like five years—”
She smacked me in the chest. I grabbed her hand and held her sizzling fingertips against my neck until they began slowly inching up to cup my cheek. “Tell me one thing, and I want the truth, Thorn.”
I sighed, body buzzing with awareness. “Okay.”
She licked her pink lips, and her hand continued to move back and forth against my jaw, driving me insane with the need to kiss her. “Why did you guys stop having sex?”
My head told me to lie.
My heart told me that was all I’d been doing for the past four years.
“Because I kissed you, and I knew in that moment that if I could kiss a seventeen-year-old girl—if I looked forward to stupid things like picking you up at work or you coming to me when your boyfriend dumped you—then I was already screwed. In my mind, I was cheating. I was a cheater then, Avery. I’m a cheater now. At least now I admit it. When I was with Kayla . . . all I wanted. Was. You.”
Avery kissed me.
I swallowed her moan as I tangled my hands in her hair and gripped her head, deepening the kiss by sucking on her tongue while she tried to crawl into my lap.
“We’ll”—I broke off the kiss, then went in for another—“get it to go?”
She nodded and kissed me again, and when Avery pulled back, her green eyes sparkled. I knew in that moment, the connection had never just been a crush.
I hadn’t kissed her four years ago because it was wrong and felt good.
Or forbidden.
Illegal.
Or even stupid.
It’s because what we had between us was real. The most real thing I’d ever experienced with anyone.
Only now?
I had nothing holding me back, except for the guilty feeling in the back of my head that told me—even if she gave me her heart, I’d never be able to give her mine. Not when so many other women currently had a piece of it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
AVERY
I used to make fun of this kind of girl.
The one who threw caution to the wind and made a poor life choice and then cried into a box of Lucky Charms when the guy ended up being a total asshole.
And even though I knew the ending long before it happened, I couldn’t help but make the same stupid choice.
Kiss him again.
And again.
And again.
Until my lips were swollen from the friction of his, until my greedy hands were burned by the scruff on his cheeks.
I craved more of him.
And sadly, pathetically, I always had. And probably always would.
That’s the thing about crushes—if you’re lucky, they go away and you find someone so incredible that the whole crush is laughable, a distant memory you think about or maybe dream about once every three years after having too much sangria.
But the crush I’d had on Lucas?
It had always been more.
It went from being a crush, to hero worship, to him being my best friend—and the minute we locked eyes that fateful day on his couch?
I knew it could be more.
If my sister—my adorable, amazing older sister—hadn’t been standing in the way. With a ring on her finger.
Did that make me just as bad as Lucas?
Just as guilty?
Did that mean I was a cheater too?
No! A voice screamed in my head, or maybe it was just my heart yelling as loud as it could. My sister had lost Lucas. Ignored Lucas. She hadn’t been thankful for what was right in front of her—and their relationship ended.
This was different.
I was an adult.
So was he.
We didn’t need permission to actually follow through with what everyone else already assumed was happening.
Right?
My head hurt just thinking about it. His mouth met mine again and again, and the scent of his body hung in the air as I clutched the front of his shirt and tried not to be “that” girl in the back of the cab who straddles the dude before they even make it to his apartment.
By the time we made it into his building’s elevator, both of us were breathing heavily, and the guilt at what I was doing had somehow transformed into this white-hot need to strip every inch of his clothing from his hot man-candy body and see if I could make him tremble beneath my touch—the way I did beneath his.
Five steps to his door.
Still. No talking.
It opened.
The lock clicked shut.
Darkness enveloped the entire apartment—the only light was the moon as it glowed across the Sound and stretched through the floor-to-ceiling bay windows.
And still no talking.
It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, which should have been my first clue that this wasn’t a one-night stand or a test to see if we were compatible.
This was Lucas and me following through with something we both had wanted a long time ago—something that we were never allowed to have because of factors that felt beyond our control. And something that involved feelings neither of us had ever admitted to out loud.
Until now.
My heart kept trying to remind me that there were other women, that he’d cheated on my sister, that this too was cheating—that I wasn’t different because tomorrow he’d be with someone else.
But stupidly, like I said, I was becoming the girl—the girl who did bad things, the girl who was convinced that she was different, that she was the game changer.
My mind reacted to that possibility in a completely logical way by reminding me of his calendar—of who he’d been on a date with just before he kissed me.
Warm hands cupped my shoulders and then slowly made their way down to my wrists. “You’re so soft.”
I leaned my head back against his chest. “What’s happening?”
“I stopped asking that the minute you kissed me back. Figured it would be better for my sanity.”
“So you admit this is insane, right?”
“Right.”
Protect your heart, protect your heart! Don’t be that girl, don’t be that girl! My brain screamed, and my heart thudded wildly. I turned in his arms. “I’ll be your Wednesday, but only for this week, only for tonight. And then this is over with, whatever this is, whatever itch that needs scratching or desire that needs to be fulfilled. Once I walk out that door, we go back to hating each other and under no circumstances do we ever discuss it. Ever.”
Say no. Please say no.
Give me more than one day.
Be different.
Let this be the game changer.
Instead, Lucas’s expression turned cold as he whispered the word. “Okay.”
I wasn’t different.
I was going to be just like the others, desperate for him, thrown aside when the sun rose the next morning.
One night.