16. Leo
Mari was going to kill me?
As the light changed in her eyes and her features grew feral, I realized it might be too late to save myself. It was my turn to be the person she launched herself at.
I’d been genuinely trying to help her. I understood the need to smash through some big emotions, and it’d been going well, until she started crying. More than crying, body-shaking sobbing.
Or was it laughing? I still wasn’t clear because the two emotions turned out to be startlingly similar on her.
Whatever it had been was entirely wiped clean as her panting slowed down, her shoulders rose, and her breaths evened out. Her pupils were blown out, and her throat worked a swallow as her gaze moved over me. She looked like she wanted to eat me up.
Even though divesting herself of her outerwear took several seconds, my body was incapable of moving. Fight, flight, or freeze? I now knew where I stood.
And it was directly in her warpath.
I barely had enough time to toss aside my crowbar before Mari moved. She hopped into my arms, wrapping her long legs around me and shoving off the rest of my protective headgear with her hands.
Feral had been the right word.
“What is happening?” I panted out as she grabbed my face, her gaze moving frantically over my features.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, trembling in my arms.
“I think we should explore it,” I said.
I walked until her backside rested on the table, making sure there was no sharp debris. She squeezed her legs, bringing me closer yet. My quickly growing arousal would be apparent against her soon.
I really hoped I wasn’t misreading this situation.
“I want to kiss you,” she said.
“Thank God,” I said.
Our mouths clashed together roughly. Trying to get a handle on myself, I squeezed her thighs and forced myself to calm down. I pulled my head back slightly, and she chased after me, our lips never disconnecting.
I smiled against her soft mouth. “It’s okay. Just . . . slowing.”
She made a needy sound that shot to my cock. There was no doubt she felt it now as she ground against me.
“Fuck,” I said, turning my head and wrapping my fingers into her hair with one hand.
The other hand was busy running up her side and waist. The jumpsuit made it hard to touch her skin, but I was nothing if not determined. I searched for a snap or zipper that might let me feel the heat of her skin.
Our kiss softened but wasn’t any less urgent. Our tongues found each other quickly, and our mouths moved perfectly in sync. We read each other like musicians who’d been playing together for decades. When she took, I gave. I tilted her head in my hand, exposing her neck to me, and kissed down the side. She gasped out my name, and all thoughts vanished.
We couldn’t get close enough. I didn’t have enough hands to explore her with. I finally found the godforsaken zipper and began to tug it down.
“Uh. Excuse me,” a voice called out through the speakers. “Your time is up in five minutes. We’re about to close.” It was the teenager that had let us in.
Mari leaned back, and her wet, swollen lips parted. I took a long, slow lick across them.
“Just so y’all know, there are cameras in there,” the girl added.
Mari licked her lips, tasting me as her eyes widened. A flush burned across her cheeks.
“Sorry,” I called out. “We are, uh, just wrapping up.”
We separated and took off the protective suits. We exchanged the occasional look, and I really wished I could hear Mari’s thoughts.
“Sorry about that,” I said to the worker as we left out the front door.
“It happens a lot.” She didn’t glance up from her phone as she pointed at a sign I hadn’t noticed before. There were several just like it when I looked around: Cameras Recording at All Times. With a graphic of a black camera and red flash.
Mari was silent until we got in the car. Then she threw her head back and laughed.
I worried she might freak out, but laughter didn’t feel great.
“I cannot believe I did that!” she yelled into her hands now covering her face. “I guess we can just chalk that up to the heat of the moment,” she said. “I’m sorry. My impulsiveness still manages to catch me off guard.”
“I hardly think that’s something to apologize for. A marching band at seven in the morning? Yes. That? No.”
“It’s not okay! I attacked you. I didn’t even ask for consent. How humiliating. I completely lost control. I didn’t mean to send the wrong signals. You don’t deserve to be the person I work my stuff out on.”
It was like I’d been punched in the gut. Something weighed on her. I’d heard her cursing somebody while she pulverized her aggressions into smithereens, but I wanted to understand how she felt about me separately from that.
But it wasn’t about me. Whatever Mari needed to get out of her system, the outing had been a success.
“Apparently, it happens a lot.” I started the car and cleared my throat. I was embarrassingly hard still.
“Maybe I should think about investing in that unlimited pass.” She let out a long sigh. “Gosh, I’m still sweating. That was...incredible. Thank you. I’ve never let loose like that.”
I glanced over at her. Her head was back against the seat, a little bit of hair stuck down from sweat on her temple. She still had a mark on her nose from the tightness of the goggles. And she was beautiful. My feelings for her were rapidly pulling me under. I kept waiting to find a time when I wasn’t attracted to her, but with our every interaction, she became more alluring.
I needed to get a grip.
I began the drive back to Green Valley. The fall hours meant it was already dark, and the car grew quiet. I began to wonder if she’d tuckered herself out completely and checked to see if she was sleeping. As another car passed, briefly illuminating her face, I was surprised to find her still watching me, sleepy eyes and hands curled under her cheek. She’d brought her knees up to her chest and leaned against the partially reclined seat. “I could fall asleep,” she said softly.
I took no small amount of pleasure knowing she felt safe enough to be that relaxed.
“We’ve got a while yet,” I said. “You can take a nap.”
She made a soft sound and went quiet. My heart thudded in my chest, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter. I felt fevered and anxious. My body sensed something was coming and was trying to prepare me. I wanted to go home and not leave again.
Maybe if I didn’t see her, or touch her, or smell her, I could quell this rising panic.
“How did you know that’s what I needed?” she asked in a sleepy voice.
Something about the words and the way she said it had me clenching my jaw. An image of her sprawled out on a bed, knees parted, cheeks red, satisfaction curling her lips... How did you know that’s what I needed?
I always know what you need.
I shifted in the seat, adjusting my jeans. “Just a hunch. Janice was a big proponent of therapy before all the cool kids did it. When I was young, I’d always felt so apart from everybody else.” I cleared my throat, not quite ready to go into all my issues. “When the bullying started, she wanted to make sure I could process everything. I didn’t tell her the worst of it, but she must have sensed something. Plus, I regularly got to smash loud things together, and that helped with a good amount of teenage angst.”
“Anytime you get mad, you also get practice.”
“Two birds, one scone,” I said, and she chuckled.
“I’m sorry you had such a rough time in high school.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t all bad. I had my mom.”
“And your band, right? I think I read online that you two were best friends since you were kids,” she said.
“You read online, huh?”
“Well, I needed to learn about the man who might be tutoring my student.”
I’d assumed it had been her idea to seek me out, but something in her tone made me wonder if that wasn’t the case.
“I had Vander. We were inseparable and going to leave this town once and for all, so I had that to motivate me whenever I got teased for wearing black nail polish.”
“I’m so glad times are changing. There is zero tolerance for so much of the garbage that was just ‘part of growing up.’”
“As it should be.”
“Exactly. But still. I’m glad you had Vander. It helps when you’re young.”
“It was everything.”
I couldn’t think about Vander and The Burnouts now. Especially knowing they’d be here soon. A tug of guilt at the reminder of the conversation with Devlin. And now Big Ben’s was off the table.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but I wasn’t sure what for.
I narrowed my eyes at the road. Vander was such a fresh bruise. Even six months later, I couldn’t poke it yet.
“Are Noah and Jonas past boyfriends?” I asked, desperate to shift the focus.
“Ew. What! No?” She straightened off the seat. “They’re my brothers. Why would you think that?”
Brothers? “In the midst of your raging, you said those names among the rest. I just assumed they were.”
“Oh. I guess I didn’t realize I was so vocal.”
I swallowed down the useful thoughts that tried to pop up when she said that.
“You know, it’s weird,” she said. “All sorts of stuff came up that I wasn’t expecting. Including my brothers, apparently. There’s a small chance I have some thoughts about that,” she said sarcastically.
“Where are they?” This was the family that had stood her up. I couldn’t understand it.
She let out a long breath. “Noah, he’s the oldest. He’s in New York. He and his partner, Asim, are corporate lawyers.” She turned and looked out the window. “And Jonas, he’s the middle. He and his wife, Alice, live in North Carolina with their two little kids.” She spoke like she read from a cold-call script. Like she’d said it a hundred times. “They aren’t too far and come down for the holidays if they aren’t with Alice’s family.”
“You aren’t close?”
“We used to be,” she said. The loneliness that seeped through her words broke my heart. “Or at least I idolized them growing up. I would survive off five minutes of their attention for months, waiting like an addict for my next hit. I would listen to the music they listened to. I would try to befriend their friends and act cool so they wouldn’t be embarrassed to have me around. But they were older. I was just starting high school when they left the state to go to college. First Noah, then a year later, Jonas. They got real jobs and never looked back. That’s just the way of it, isn’t it?”
I thought, Not always, but the tone shift warned me to keep my comments to myself.
“I’ve never understood why everyone is so quick to forget their roots. Like this town means nothing. It’s no worse or better than any other town.”
I cleared my throat uncomfortably. It was hard not to wonder if this was partially about my own return to Green Valley.
“Some people just need to find where they fit,” I offered lamely.
“Yeah. I guess. It’s scares me how something that was such a big part of their lives for so long could be abandoned just like that,” she snapped. “Didn’t they miss it here at all?” Maybe this wasn’t about the town. “Was this place so forgettable?”
“You are anything but forgettable, Mari Mitchell,” I said in a tight voice.
She made a soft sound like she didn’t believe me and turned her head away. I wanted to pull the car over, grab her shoulders, and kiss her until she believed me. I wanted to implant the taste of myself so deep within her that she would trust my truth.
I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t stop thinking about her, no matter how hard I tried. That if there was any sort of justice in the world, I’d be able to get her out of my mind for even just a few minutes a day. But ever since she’d shown up on my lawn, she was the only thing that occupied my mind. My internal metronome was set to the beat of her heart.
We were silent as I took the exit for Green Valley. Nothing I could say would make her believe her worth if she didn’t feel it in herself. But I could show her.
Maybe I was adrift in my life right now, but I had a purpose for the first time in a long time. Mari didn’t want a relationship, but she could use a friend, and, I guess, so could I.
I could make her happy, and there was no better purpose.
“I talked to Devlin today,” I said, pulling up to her apartment building.
“Oh?” If she thought it was weird I hadn’t mentioned it earlier, she didn’t say as much.
“He said we could use the studio.”
“Thank you. Oh, amazing.” Mari launched herself at me for the second time that night, squeezing my chest.
I closed my eyes and inhaled her joy. I could avoid Vander and the band. I could help out Cath. I nudged my chin along her hair. This, right here, made it all worth it.