SHE DIDN’T TELL HIM.
For the hundredth time, she didn’t tell him. It’s been two weeks of broken promises and desperate excuses and I get it, I really do get it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not fucking tired of it.
Silence fills my truck, the tension between us damn near suffocating, and I sigh knowing I’m the one who has to break it. The conversation with Cass rattled her, I can tell in the way she’s chewing her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. “You’re freaking out over nothing.”
Amelia gapes at me in disbelief. “Nothing? Did you not hear me? He said he would kill you.”
“He was drunk, querida, and being dramatic.” Must run in the family, I quip silently. “Do you even want to tell him?”
“Of course, I do,” she answers without hesitation.
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
A soft, sad noise escapes Amelia, a whisper of a sound yet it breaks my heart anyway.
Body tense with the effort of keeping my gaze straight ahead, I ignore my mind screaming at me, begging me, to look at her. I can’t look at her because if I look at her, I’ll touch her, and when I touch her I can’t think straight, let alone articulate meaningful words. Despite my frustration, I work to keep my tone even because I don’t want to yell at her, I don’t want to chastise like a dick when she’s trying her best, I just need to vent. “I can’t even kiss my girlfriend in public, Amelia. I can’t even kiss you in front of our friends. That’s not normal.”
“I know.” Her voice is little more than a shaky whisper. “I…” Slender throat bobbing in a harsh swallow, she dips her head. “I just got him back, Nick. I can’t lose him again so quickly.”
Soft as they are, her words hit me like a train. A thought that’s been eating away at me right from the beginning, one that I shoved to the back of my mind because my head aches even considering it, rushes to the forefront.
When, if, she tells him, and if he makes her choose, I’m never going to be her first choice. Or his. She doesn’t see that if this whole thing goes to shit—I hope to fuck it doesn’t—I’m the one losing everything. Not her.
Dropping my forehead to the steering wheel, I shut my eyes and force a few deep breaths in the hopes that’ll clear the throbbing ache in my chest and behind my temples.
“I’m sorry.” A dainty hand lands on my back as lips brush my cheek. Finally giving in because it’s too fucking hard not to, I tilt my head and latch onto the wide eyes blinking at me worriedly. “I don’t want you to lose him either.”
Sighing, I smooth out her scrunched nose with my thumb, tracing the bottom lip she’s gnawed raw. “I told you I don’t want to sneak around anymore.”
“I heard you. Nick, I promise I will tell him. Tonight just threw me a little.”
I want to believe her. Fuck, I want to believe her so much. And I do but I don’t because as convincing as the resolute glint in her green gaze is, her track record is working against her. I trust her but I’m not sure I trust her reasoning behind staying quiet. I want her but I don’t want this half-assed arrangement we have, and if I need to do something slightly drastic to hammer that fact home, I will.
In one smooth movement, I sit back and lift Amelia onto my lap, a squeal escaping her as her thighs settle on either side of mine. She inhales sharply when I dip beneath her hoodie, stroking her bare skin until it’s pebbled with goosebumps. My other hand drifts down to cup her ass, the material of her leggings soft against my palm. “Do you know how fucking hard it is to keep my hands off you? To watch other guys flirt with you, touch you, when I can’t?”
“No one was-” I cut her off with a harsh laugh. God, she’s so fucking oblivious sometimes; half the baseball team, half the damn diner, was chasing after her tonight. Trying to make her laugh, offering to buy her drinks, ‘accidentally’ rubbing up against her. Fuck me, I almost shattered the beer in my hand half a dozen times, I was gripping it so hard trying to stop myself from doing something I’d regret.
Or, more likely, from doing something Amelia would yell at me for.
Lips brushing her neck, I greedily breath in the heady scent of coconut, tongue darting out to trace her pulse. “You think you’re the only one who gets jealous?”
Amelia hums a non-response, too busy watching as I breach the waistband of her pants, slipping a hand in her panties and wasting no time dragging a thumb over the bundle of nerves always begging for my attention. Fighting a smirk when her hips begin to writhe, I press harder, tracing circles I know are too slow for her liking. “You want me to touch you, querida?”
She moans agreeably, head jerking in a nod, and I kiss my teeth in mock annoyance. “What did we say about words?”
‘Please.’ Boa menina.
‘Please, what?’ I taunt, dragging my teeth along her jaw. Amelia whines, my shirt bunching between her fists as she wriggles closer.
“Please touch me.”
I do. Slowly, and it’s as painstaking for me as it is for her. As one hand works between her thighs, the other traces each and every inch of her skin I can reach, lingering on the spots I know are stained purple. At my own leisurely pace, I touch the girl who refuses to acknowledge herself as mine until her head drops to my shoulder, her soft moans ringing in my ear. “Nick, please.”
As quickly as I tugged her onto my lap, I remove her, swiftly depositing her back onto the passenger seat, clicking her seatbelt into place, and starting the truck before she even registers what’s happening. “No.”
Out of the corner of my eyes, I see her gaping at me, swollen lips parted in an expression of confusion, surprise, and a whole lot of frustration.
Good.
The ten minute drive back to her place passes in complete silence, charged by pure sexual tension. Only when my truck rolls to a stop outside her place do I finally turn to her, fighting back a grin once again at the sight of her mussed hair and pretty glare.
‘What the fuck was that, Nicolas?’
‘If I can’t touch you in public, I’m not touching you in private.’ When she scoffs in disbelief, I reach over and grip her chin between my fingers, face as solemn as I’m capable of setting it. “I’m serious, Amelia. If you don’t tell him, I’m out. I’m not sneaking around anymore like we’re doing something wrong when we’re not. You deserve so much fucking more than a quick fuck in a parking lot, meu amor, and if you won’t let me give you that, then I’m done.’
As my speech settles in the air around us, the air becomes stifling again. When bright eyes become watery, a bottom lip wobbling dangerously, I curse myself internally. For a harrowing moment, I’m convinced I took it too far. And then, Amelia cups my cheek, sliding a thumb along my cheekbone. “For the record,” she sniffs, “you deserve more than this too.”
So give it to me, querida.
“Glad you think so.” Already disregarding the newly introduced rule, I shift to kiss her palm. “According to your brother, I deserve to die alone in a hole.”
Her watery laughter fills the truck, as little humor behind it as there is in her subsequent unnecessary apology, “I’m sorry I let him talk about you like that.”
“Don’t be. I’ve given him a reason to.” God, I knew the no-touching thing would be difficult but I didn’t expect to fail so damn quickly; I can’t seem to resist tangling my fingers around hers, moving them from my cheek to my lip as I spout the most cliché shit but I need it verbalized, “This is different.”
And fuck, does something in my chest roll when she confirms with complete confidence, “I know.”
I am the first to admit that for someone enforcing a strict ban on physical contact, I am indulging in a fuck-ton of physical contact. In hindsight, it wasn’t my greatest idea, announcing a plan born of desperation that I can’t exactly go back on; I realized that about thirty seconds after she climbed out of my truck and I was left dithering like a dickhead wondering if I was allowed follow her upstairs. Logically speaking, no touching equates to no sleepovers, and an internal dilemma began as I tried to recall the last time I slept by myself, let alone in my own bed.
Luckily, our relationship does not revolve around logic. It’s unclear whether Amelia took pity on me or whether she simply wasn’t too fond of sleeping alone either but when she beckoned me after her, I followed like a lovesick puppy. And I’m pretty sure that’s what I am.
Lovesick.
I’m not an expert on the matter, God knows that, but if I had to put a name to the goddamn warm, fuzzy feeling constantly plaguing me, I’d call it love.
I almost told her when we crawled into bed last night. And again when she got up for class this morning, a pathetic whine leaving me as she wriggles from my grasp, the confession poised to be used a bribe to stay. And when I was roused a couple of hours later as she crept between the sheets again, her freezing cold skin jerking me awake, I was so fucking close to whispering it in her ear as I lazily rolled on top of her, lending her my body warmth and drifting off again.
The three little words are once again perched on the tip of my tongue as I doze on the girl I—fuck it—love, as she combs gently through my hair, her voice a low murmur as to not disturb as she talks into her phone.
Kissing the chest I’m sleepily nuzzling, I shift so my lips can graze the slender throat vibrating with words I’m not yet awake enough to decipher. Fingers dig into my scalp, pulling slightly to stop my antics.
“Dad,” I hear that boner-killing word loud and fucking clear, “gimme two minutes, okay?”
Waiting until she clicks the call on hold and carefully sets her phone aside, I groan and drop my forehead to her collarbone. “There’s something very wrong about you being on the phone to your father while I’m on top of you.”
“I figured the alleged lack of touching would keep things PG.” Amelia smoothes my hair back from my face, laughing and speaking softly as though she’s paranoid her dad might somehow hear. “I didn’t think you’d be so shit at your own rule.”
“I’m amending it,” I grumble against her. “No coming.”
Using her grip on my hair, Amelia wrenches my head backward and arches a brow. “If I don’t get to come, neither do you.”
“It’ll be worth it when you tell Cass and I can fuck the life out of you without feeling like a criminal.”
Freckled cheeks tint pink—exactly what I was hoping for. I roll off her with a chuckle. “You want me to leave?” I ask when she reaches for her phone again.
Instead of nodding like I expect, Amelia pauses. Her head tilts like she’s considering it, tongue darting out to wet the corner of her mouth. And then, like a light bulb goes off in her pretty little head, her face brightens and she practically lunges for her phone. Before I can question her, she’s pressing taking her dad off hold and blurting, “I have something to tell you.”
What are you doing? I mouth but she waves me off.
“Dad, I have a boyfriend.”
Oh, fuck.
Choking on a protest, I throw myself at her but she evades, leaping off the bed and scuttling to the opposite side of the room. I stalk after her, a dainty hand on my chest barely keeping me at bay, my hissed complaints going ignored. If I was smart, I would shut the fuck up and try to listen in on her dad’s reply but my gut is screaming at me to hang up that damn phone before she blurts out who her boyfriend is and I end up with another important man in her life rooting against me.
When Amelia bursts out laughing, I freeze. “How did you know?”
“Know?” I wheeze too loudly before I can stop myself. “Know what?’
Amelia slaps at my chest with wide eyes, but the mirth lurking in them goes nowhere. No matter how hard I strain, her dad’s garbled voice is too faint to understand. At least that means he’s not yelling, I guess.
Silver linings.
“Yeah, he’s here now.” I shrink away, half-expecting Patrick to crawl through the phone and throttle me, but I’m soothed when my favorite version of Amelia’s smile comes out to play, the one that appears when she stops overthinking and actually lets herself be happy. “He is. He’s really good to me.”
As quickly as it descended, the dread coiled in my gut fucks right off.
I can’t help it; I break out smiling like a fool. A lovestruck fool. Amelia keeps talking but I don’t hear a word, too busy gazing at her with fucking stars in my eyes.
She told her dad. She fucking told her dad. Her dad. One of the most important men in her life knows because she told him, and as far I’m aware, there was no screaming about how I’m not good enough for his little girl.
Not that he’d be wrong about that.
The moment she hangs up, I’m on her. Scooping her up, I tote her back to bed, carefully flopping down with her beneath me and cupping her face with all the reverence in the world. “Why’d you do that?”
It’s a rhetorical question, almost. I think I know the answer; this is her way of proving that she’s trying. Actions speak louder than words, and all that shit.
“Because I wanted to,” she states too simply. “Although, does it really count as telling him if he already knew?” When I frown, she smoothes out the grooves of my forehead. “Our mothers.”
I groan—enough said. I should’ve known that if my mom caught on, Lynn wouldn’t be far behind. Judging by Amelia’s sunny demeanour, there’s some unspoken agreement that it won’t get back to Cass until she decides to let it.
