That’s it. That’s all. I can’t wait. I don’t want to. I’m sick of it. I need this contact with him. I need this moment. I need to know what it’s like again to have this kind of connection.
I kiss him.
Slow. Soft. But full of need. Full of hope. Full of my wish for this, us, him and me, to become more than just friends. I want him so badly, I want to return to our night, I want him to take away the pain again. I want his touch to remind me that there is good in the world, that two people can care and be close, and it doesn’t have to be a game, or someone using the other.
That there can be something real and true.
He groans as I trace his lips with my tongue. His lips part, and he lets me lead the kiss, lets me taste his mouth and his tongue. Then, in seconds, the kiss changes. He spins me around, and now my back is against the brick wall, and he threads his hands into my hair, running his fingers through the thick strands, all while kissing me deeply, his tongue sliding against mine, his breath tasting so good, his lips capturing mine. It’s a fiery kiss, full of months of pent-up longing, borne of a night when everything seems so far out of reach that sometimes you have to grab the visceral, the physical, to tie you back to earth. To make you forget all the ways your life is spinning beyond your control. He kisses harder, insistently, as if he can’t get enough of me, as if he needs to taste me, to drown in this kiss with me.
I lose myself too. I let go of the meeting, of the SOS to Cam, of Danielle’s words, of my mom’s insatiable need to hook me up, of the stories Miranda makes me write, of my past. I shed them all. They are vapor, they are nothing, I am new again.
I am no longer that person.
Layla is gone as I am at once lost and found in a kiss like this. A kiss that has nothing to do with power, or games, or control. A kiss that simply has to be. His hands in my hair, then roaming down my back, then grappling at my hips. And all the while we are in this together, we both want this, we both need this, there is no uneven distribution of desire, or money, or want. His lips consume me with desperation, and soon he’s traversing my neck, and kissing the hollow of my throat, and I gasp quietly.
“Oh,” I say, but for me that’s everything because I don’t make noise, I don’t vocalize, I don’t let on when I’m turned on.
“Fuck, Harley,” he says, and grabs my ass and pulls me against him, so I can feel how much he wants this too. He licks his way up my neck, and I melt inside with longing as his lips brush my earlobe. As if he’s about to whisper something. Maybe tell me how much he wants to taste me and touch me.
But then his hands are on my shoulders, and he’s no longer holding me close. He’s holding me back. I’m standing here panting, lost in some sort of crazed moment of lust, and he’s suddenly all cool and calm as he says, “But I can’t. I can’t go there. And I have to get the f**k away right now.”
He grabs his backpack and leaves, the screen door swinging with several creaks.
He’s gone.
And I’m alone in this ridiculously romantic courtyard in the middle of New York. Hot and bothered and utterly left behind. Like an idiot. Like a stupid f**king idiot.
My phone buzzes. I grab it in milliseconds, hoping it’s Trey.
But it’s Cam.
Missing things? Missing me? That can be fixed in an instant, sweetheart. Tomorrow night. Bliss Bar. 7 p.m. Be there.
Chapter Six
Trey
I slam the door to my apartment, lock it and slide the chain.
As if I can sequester myself. As if I can shut myself off from her, and stay inside my home, far, far away from Harley. Like I’m sealed up and safe again.
But the thing is this….
She has to go to SLAA.
She was forced to go.
She’s being blackmailed.
I chose to go. No one made me. No one forced me. I guess you could say Mr. Thompson did when he found me making out with his wife in the elevator at my parent’s apartment building. I run my finger across the scar on my cheek, and the pain echoes, even months later as I head to the cramped kitchen. I don’t think I realized just how strong he was. Or how mad he’d be, but when his fist connected with my face, I felt his college ring rattle through every bone in my body.
They make the rings damn solid at Yale University.
Yeah, it hurt.
When you’ve been pummeled by a man who’s six-five, two-hundred-forty pounds and wears one of those big-ass class rings, I guess that’s how you manage a self-imposed monkhood for a year. The ring sliced my cheek apart. I could actually see several millimeters of the meat under the skin right after it happened. My mom sewed me up that evening without a word. The scar would have been much worse if I didn’t have that sort of access to one of the premier plastic surgeons in Manhattan. She wasn’t happy with me but what could she do? I was twenty, and she couldn’t control me. She could have cut me off from college, but she wants me in school more than anything. Besides, in my family, we deal with the practical. We shut the door to rooms that aren’t used, we stitch up cuts, we take painkillers to numb the day, and we don’t talk about things.
I didn’t talk about my brothers. Because they didn’t talk about my brothers. So why would they want to talk about why I was spending so much time with the married women in the swank Upper East Side building where they lived? But I knew I had a problem, and the cut on my face was my rock bottom. I didn’t need someone else to find the bottom of addiction for me. I f**king found it, and I decided to get my shit together after I spent the better part of my teenage years screwing married women in my building.