Chapter 2
2
RHYS
M addie and I double over in laughter.
Being here in my room, the door closed behind us, our laughter bouncing off my walls contrasting with the muffled sound of the music still pounding downstairs … damn, it feels good. More than good, it feels right .
“What the hell was that about?” Maddie asks, lifting her black-framed glasses to wipe the tears of laughter underneath her eyes.
I straighten up and take a deep breath, my stomach muscles still sore from laughing so hard. “I was trying to sneak up on you and heard the shit those girls were saying. Couldn’t resist shutting them up.”
“I’m pretty sure one of the girls is on my dorm floor,” Maddie answers. “Now you’ve made me an enemy for the whole semester.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to be friends with people like that.”
She sighs. “Guess you’re right. I mean, who would—” she stops mid-sentence, her eyes going wide at a spot on the wall behind me. “Oh my gosh, you got it framed!”
I turn around, following the direction of her eyes, and a smile immediately stretches across my face.
It’s the picture she painted for me for my birthday last year. A gorgeous oil painting of a pond in the town where we grew up, a place I always used to go when I needed a moment to myself. She never even told me she was working on it; she just showed up here on the afternoon of my birthday after classes and handed it to me.
For a while, I just had it hooked by the piece of string on the back of the canvas to a nail hammered in my wall, but last week I took it in to get professionally framed in a nice, wooden frame worthy of the piece of art that it is.
Spent way more on it than I can afford, but it was damn sure worth it.
“Sure did,” I say. The smile on her face as she looks at the painting makes my heart squeeze.
For a moment, I’m totally lost in looking at her—her hair that looks so fucking soft tied in a ponytail that sweeps over her shoulder and hangs in front of her chest; her blue eyes caught on the painting she made me; her rosy cheeks; her plush, pink lips; the creamy smoothness of her neck …
I force myself back to reality. “Notice anything else about the room?” I ask.
She glances around, and her jaw drops. “You decorated!”
A chuckle vibrates in my chest. “About time, right?”
Last semester, Maddie was giving me shit about having a total guy room , as she called it. Grey sheets, one pillow inside a pillowcase that was a slightly different shade of grey, all my clothes folded in a laundry basket sitting in the corner, a desk with a plain black chair in front of it.
No decorations, no extra furniture, nothing on the walls other than the picture she painted.
I mentioned to her that I’d been feeling kind of gloomy lately after the hockey season ended, and she suggested I spruce up my room. Fill it with things I like, things that make me happy just looking at them.
Finally, I decided to take her advice.
Maddie walks around, marveling at the new vintage bookcase I bought so that I’m not stacking my books in a pile against the wall anymore, the square end table in front of my window with a leafy green plant on it, and the new standing lamp next to my desk.
I got them all from a thrift store here in Cedar Shade that Maddie recommended. They didn’t even set me back much money. And she was right, I do feel better just hanging out in here now that the room isn’t so bare bones.
She turns to my bed and lets out a gasp. “You have more than one pillow now! And your sheets aren’t prison-bar grey!”
“I’m turning over a new decorative leaf,” I quip.
“Hmm, those pillows look fluffy,” Maddie says as she approaches my new bedspread.
I feel a twinge of guilt pinch my chest, because suddenly I’m hoping for something I have no business to hope for. Something that I should really be hoping doesn’t happen, knowing what it’s going to do to me if it does.
Despite my better judgment, I’m hoping that she …
Maddie falls backward onto my bed, her head onto the pillows, her limbs splayed out comfortably on my mattress. And it feels like every cubic centimeter of blood in my body rushes straight to my cock.
My mouth goes dry. My jaw clenches. My heart thuds so hard against my chest that it almost smashes out.
It’s a good thing Maddie has her eyes closed as she nuzzles her head into my new pillows, because if she were looking at me right now, there’s no way she’d miss the outline of my hardness straining against my jeans.
I know I should stop my eyes from raking over her, but I also know that’s a fight I’m not going to win.
My gaze greedily eats her up. Her right leg is turned out slightly, giving me a perfect view of the smooth, creamy skin of her inner thigh, and my blood goes even thicker at the sight.
She’s wearing a pair of loose canvas shorts, the billowy hem accentuating her shapely legs. A white tank top is tucked into them, and over it she wears an open, oversized blue button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
It’s such a Maddie look. Bohemian, effortlessly stylish, casual but more mouthwatering than the skin-tight dresses any of the girls downstairs are wearing.
The way her arms are splayed out on my mattress makes her shirt open wider. My gaze ticks up to the gentle swell of her breasts.
For a moment, I fall into a kind of hypnosis as they rise and fall with her steady breaths, the sight of her like this on my bed feeling so fucking right that my heart aches with yearning as I let myself imagine how maybe …
But that’s my cue to shake my head, to wipe those thoughts from my mind and step back into reality.
The reality where Maddie Larsen would never be anything more than friends with a guy like me, a guy from the wrong side of the tracks whose only hope is the long shot that a professional hockey career actually pans out.
And that’s even if I weren’t best friends with her brother, if we hadn’t practically grown up together, if we weren’t close friends ourselves—a relationship that means way too much to me to put at risk.
Those sobering thoughts help deflate my cock, just in time as Maddie’s eyes open.
“A picture frame, a bookshelf, a plant, four pillows on your bed … you’re a changed man, Rhys Callahan.”
I huff a laugh. “Wouldn’t have happened without your advice, trust me.”
She winks. “If you insist, I’ll take all the credit.”
I roll my eyes. “Should we rejoin the party now? See what kind of trouble Jasmine got up to in your absence?”
“Already? Won’t your reputation suffer if those girls see you coming back down with me so soon ?” Maddie quips.
“Trust me,” I say, arching my brows, “nothing could damage my reputation on that front.”
Maddie blows a raspberry. “So cocky.”
I hold the door open for her. “Justifiably so,” I joke as we step into the hallway.
Then I shut the door behind us, and we head downstairs. Back down to the pounding music, the gyrating bodies, the frenzied energy. Back into the real world.
It’s always a letdown for me, stepping from time alone with Maddie back into the real world. Back into the company of other people.
There’s always an ache in my chest. There’s always a sensation of longing singing through my body, wishing that Maddie and I could have more time together, just the two of us, because it’s never enough.
Wishing that days like this would never end, that there won’t come a time when we don’t see each other every day.
Wishing that Maddie and I could spend all our time together. Wishing that I didn’t have to lie about my feelings anymore.
I know it’s not possible. But a guy can dream.