“I’d say completely wasted would be about neck and neck with shitfaced.”
I nodded and closed my eyes while a sigh slipped through my barely parted lips. “Okay…then I was about thirteen notches past that.”
“Shit, Janelle.” He couldn’t hide the frustration in his deep, gruff tone. “What all do you remember? And please tell me you remember something.”
Oh, how I wanted to give Holden a tiny sliver of peace. I wished more than anything I could recall one iota of the night in question—for his benefit and mine—but unfortunately, I couldn’t. At all. For some reason, when I tried to think back on the day as a whole, everything seemed fuzzy, including my brother’s entire wedding, even though I hadn’t started drinking until much later. Knowing I needed to say something, I took a chance and said the only thing I could bet was a sure thing.
“We had sex. I remember that.” Such a lie, but I didn’t care. The pained look on his face made me want to give him reassurance. I would’ve spun the most elaborate tale just to ease his worry if I knew he wouldn’t have had a clue how false it was. “Well, I don’t remember all of it, but I do remember you taking my virginity.” I tried to make my voice sound clear and confident, when in reality, I wanted to be deleted from this scene as swiftly as possible. My brother would kill me if he found out. After he killed Holden, of course. I was young…I still had so much life left to live.
“Oh, thank God,” he breathed out and hung his head. “Your reaction just now had me worried you didn’t remember that part. I would’ve hated myself if that were true. I mean, someone forgetting they had sex with me is bad enough…because I’m not forgettable.” His sexy yet cocky grin made my head spin—worse than it already was. “But if you couldn’t remember losing your virginity, I would be the biggest piece of shit on Earth. I’d never forgive myself for that.”
That settled it—there was no way I could ever confess to him that I’d lied.
“Come on, we have to get you up and showered before your mom comes back to the room. If she sees this place, she’ll never let you leave for college.” He stood up and grabbed a few towels from the rack above the toilet. After he set them on the vanity, he started the water and then headed out of the bathroom.
I took the opportunity to pull my body off the floor and quickly jump behind the curtain. The water raining from the showerhead hadn’t quite warmed up, and I screamed at the stabbing sensation of freezing needles hitting my body. As if hopping into a frigid shower while severely hung over wasn’t bad enough, I almost died of a heart attack when a pair of arms wound around my waist from behind, and a snicker escaped the perfect set of lips closing in on my shoulder. Had I not been so thankful for his body heat, I would’ve shoved him away and wrapped my body in the curtain to hide myself from him.
“What are you doing, Holden?” My voice came out high and off key, a perfect representation of the confusion and shock twisting in my gut. An inner battle raged between my yearnings and the dire reality of this situation. “Matthew will kill you. You do know that, right? He’s your best friend—and my brother. If he finds you in here—in my shower—he’ll chop you up into tiny pieces, and no one will ever find your body. I highly suggest you leave now before someone catches you in my room.”
To my surprise, he took a half-step back. “I was here all night, Janelle. If someone was going to catch us, they would’ve done so by now. Matt and Christine probably won’t get out of bed the entire day. And I was in the hall when your mom knocked on the door. She headed downstairs to have breakfast with the rest of your family. No one’s up here to catch us. So come on. We need to wash up, because if we aren’t downstairs when everyone else is ready to check out, someone will come up here, and that’s when the shit will hit the fan.”
“Fine. I’ll wash up, but you need to leave. Now. Go take a shower in your own room.” It wasn’t that I wanted him gone, because I didn’t. Nothing made me feel safer, more taken care of than having him near. But I needed to think, I needed to clear the fog weighing down every sluggish thought, and I couldn’t do that with him here.
With a smirk, he shook his head and cast his eyes in a sweeping motion toward my feet—I did not miss the way his attention grazed my backside on the way down, though. Then he pulled me back into him again, flush against his firm, hot, intoxicating chest. If I concentrated enough, I probably could’ve felt his heartbeat. But I couldn’t, because my focus was broken by the very hard, very large body part pressed against my lower back.
Holden apparently thought something was humorous, because his deep, airy chuckle fanned against my neck, covering me from head to toe with his heat. “I’ve already checked out. I did that while you were sleeping. And while I was at it, I grabbed us coffee, which we can drink when we get out of the shower.”
The thought of bitter coffee hitting my stomach made me shudder. “That doesn’t sound appealing. Like…at all. In fact, I think my gut may revolt again very soon at the mere thought of it.”
“Way to kill a man’s ego.”
My heart sank, and with it, I let my head fall back onto his chest below his shoulder, not even thinking about the position we were in. “That’s not what I meant. I just loathe coffee. You’ve known me for how long, yet you bought me a coffee instead of a Pepsi?”
His chuckle shook my entire body, which normally would’ve filled me with mirth, except the headache from hell prevented me from enjoying the soothing vibrations. “Well, considering I’ve never woken up with you before, I guess I didn’t assume you’d drink it first thing in the morning.”
He settled his hands on my bare hips and held me against him. In that instant, I froze, completely stunned and at a loss for what to do. I may have dreamt that he’d touch me this exact way, prayed that we’d somehow found ourselves in a position parallel to this, but that didn’t mean I knew what to do when—if—it ever happened.
“I’ve been thinking of this ever since waking up this morning.” His husky words licked the spot below my ear as his lips grazed the sensitive flesh.
His touch was so warm, so comforting, everything I’d ever wanted, but I couldn’t bring myself to break free from the nervous disposition that kept me in a perpetual state of frozen fear. Once I was finally able to force myself to move, it wasn’t the way either of us had wanted. My shoulders curled in and my head fell forward, my back hunching in what seemed to be an attempt to move away from him—even though that was the last thing I wanted.
“You okay?” His voice was different than the last time he spoke—not harsher in an angry way, but more of fear or concern. “Janelle?”