12 Stay with me tonight
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stay with me tonight
RILEY
I groaned in frustration. I was seconds away from launching my phone at the closest tree.
I’d located Parker – and my jacket – temporarily, but she’d quickly slipped away to find the guy she was seeing. Probably because I wasn’t the best company right now.
I couldn’t blame her that she’d involuntarily forced me into coming to a party that the entire hockey team was at. Maybe if she knew who my ex was then she could’ve been more cautious about forcing us into such close proximity. But I could be mad at her friend Beth, who was currently shacked up with some guy in the back of Parker’s dad’s van. Now where the hell was I meant to sleep?
I’d been on the outskirts of the party for almost an hour, holding my phone at different angles attempting to call Tanner. It was late now. He’d be asleep. But I knew he’d come and get me anyway. All I needed was reception and I could escape.
I checked over my shoulder, hoping to find a path or something that led to higher ground. What I found instead was Will Caufield returning from the woods. He stilled when he saw me. I would’ve too, had I not already been frozen.
He looked so warm in his thick jacket and Phil-U beanie. I was at the point where I couldn’t recall what it was like not having ice-cold fingers .
He danced his gaze between the party and me, contemplating. Please choose the party I prayed. Having him on my turf in the physical therapy rooms was one thing. Out here was a completely different playing field.
It was pathetic how his presence still had such an impact on me, even after all this time. I had other exes I could be in a room with and not be bothered by, but Will had always been different. We’d always been different.
My breathing slowed when he headed my way, and my heart stilled entirely when he stopped in front of me. I had to crane my head to look up at him. I’d forgotten how big he was. I used to love how big he was. Tall. Strong. It was fair to say I had a type, and that type had always been Will Caufield.
“Are you stalking me?” I asked, mock blinking sweetly.
“Me? What are you doing here?”
I tightened my hands around my phone. “I’m here for a friend.”
“Uh-huh.”
Two syllables were all it took for my temper to flare. God, he was infuriating.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Caufield. I didn’t know you or your hockey crew were going to be here.”
He looked puzzled, like I was speaking a different language. “Of course we were going to be here. It’s Ryan’s birthday.”
“Wait. Ryan as in Ryan Murphy?”
“Yep.”
Ryan, one of Will’s best friends, was the guy Parker was seeing? Well, if that wasn’t a big fuck you from the universe, I don’t know what was. The only hail Mary was that Parker never stayed interested in a guy for long, and the Ryan I knew from freshman year wasn’t a guy who liked being tied down. Hopefully they’d tire of each other soon and I could banish Will back to doesn’t-exist-in-the-same-universe-as-me territory.
“Have you seen Ryan lately?” I checked.
The odds that Parker was where he was were high.
“He went to bed with a chick an hour or so ago. I don’t expect we’ll be seeing him until morning.”
Gross and damn. I was in a bind here. Hayes’s offer was starting to seem like my safest bet.
I sunk my teeth into my lower lip. “Do you have reception so I can call someone to come and get me?”
Will cocked his head to the side. “Who would you call?”
“I’d–” I stopped midsentence. He didn’t need an explanation. “Can I use your phone or not?”
“Why do you want to leave?” he pressed.
“Because I kind of have nowhere to sleep now. ”
After a thoughtful pause, Will shook his head. “I don’t have reception. Nobody does.”
“You couldn’t have led with that?”
With a huff, I began to leave. Bickering with Will was way too familiar. He was as hot-headed as I was stubborn, so we’d always fallen into the trap of arguing about petty things.
As weird as it may sound though, I’d kind of always liked the arguments. He challenged me, and I challenged him back. And for the disagreements that turned a little more explosive, the makeup sex always made up for it.
Stop I shouted at myself. Thinking about Will Caufield naked was the last thing I needed to be doing.
“Thanks for nothing, Caufield,” I sarcastically called over my shoulder.
“Riley – wait!”
Those two words did more damage than Will realised.
The night I’d caught him with another girl, I’d silently begged him to say those two words when I was fleeing from his bedroom. But he hadn’t uttered a single thing. He’d silently let me go, and that had been that.
At some point he’d knocked on my car window. I had no clue how long I’d been sitting in the driver’s seat when he finally came downstairs. Had he finished? Had they gone on to do more? I had no clue.
Though one thing I’d known for certain was that we were done.
Clearing his throat now, Will wet his lips like saying my name had been an effort. “Stay with me tonight.”