Chapter 12
Parker
Iwake slowly, with lilac, plum, and lavender dancing behind my closed eyes. I’m warm all over. Cozy, even. That’s why it takes me a second to realize that the reason I’m warm and cozy is not because I’m being cuddled to death by Darcy, but because I’m cuddling someone else.
Landon.
I’m cuddling Landon.
His solid body is pressed against mine, or rather, I’m pressed against him—my arm draped over his waist and my leg hooked over his. Heat floods my cheeks. I don’t think he’s awake yet.
I’m not big on allowing people to get close to me.
That opens up the potential for heartache, and I’d be stupid to miss the way Landon and Ben look at each other.
I’m a lot of things, but I’m not stupid.
Not anymore. I’m cautious, and I guard my heart well, especially when it comes to people like Ben and Landon.
Landon, with his sweet, shy smiles and his earnest brown eyes. Ben, with his smirks and confidence that never borders on cockiness.
They’re dangerous.
To my heart especially.
The strings of fate are a real bitch, though, and every single day, I feel them tugging more, connecting us, tying us together. It’s not good at all. Not even a little. But I also can’t move. I mean, I physically can, but I don’t want to. It’s dangerous, but I don’t want to stop. At least not yet.
Not while everything feels like this. Not while lavender is cocooning my body and lilac is dripping from my fingertips. Not while Landon is arched like he’s trying to curl deeper into my embrace. I don’t want to open my eyes because I know once I do, the spell will be broken.
I’ll have to sit up and laugh everything off. Make a joke. The eye roll and snarky retort of, “Looks like I’m the one who ended up spooning someone,” is already heavy on my tongue, but I shove it down. At least for now.
Surely it’s okay to let myself bask in this for just a while. I can keep my heart out of it. I have to. It would be stupid otherwise. Gold threads its way into my purple. Hope and light weaving through my mental masterpiece.
My eyes pop open. No. Hope isn’t allowed here. Not like that.
Landon’s hair comes into focus, and I slowly untangle myself from him so I don’t wake him up.
I sit up, rubbing at my eyes, scrubbing the colors of content and hope out of my vision.
Ben stretches on the other side of Landon, his hair sticking up in a million different directions. My heart gives a dull thud. This really should be our last sleepover.
Landon shifts, and for a second, I allow myself to imagine it’s because the heat of my body is gone. That I’ve wrapped him in my purple, and now that it’s gone, he feels the loss like I do.
I shake those thoughts away. Ben’s eyes flutter open, and he gives me a lazy grin. It’s sleepy, much like his hazel eyes, and I can’t handle the way it makes my stomach twist with want. I’ve wanted before, and it got me nothing but pain. I won’t do that again.
Landon shifts, sitting straight up. “Oh shit.” His cheeks turn bright red. “I didn’t spoon anyone, right?”
I can’t help but laugh, but before I can answer, Ben does. “No, Park was spooning you, though.”
Asshole.
“Oh,” Landon says, glancing at me.
Ben’s staring at Landon, eyes roaming his face. Not that I can blame him. That adorable, shy blush is so fucking disarming that it’s unreal. Heat flashes in Ben’s gaze, his eyes zeroing in on Landon’s mouth.
It’s the strangest thing. Jealousy twists my stomach, but my heart also lurches. I… I think I really want to see them kiss. Want to see Landon come undone under Ben’s skilled mouth the way I did.
Would it be strange to suggest it? Maybe there’s a reason they tiptoe around each other. Maybe they aren’t interested. But the way they’re staring at each other tells me they are.
Just because I don’t want to feel that way about someone else doesn’t mean that I don’t know what it looks like.
“Kiss him.”
Two sets of eyes fly to mine, and it takes me a second longer than it should to realize those words came from me.
“What?” Landon asks softly, eyes studying me.
“Kiss him,” I say again, but this time my voice wavers as another stab of envy shoots through my heart.
I want to see it, but I don’t. I want them to, but also not.
“Really?” Ben asks. “You want us to kiss?”
I shrug like it doesn’t matter. Like I don’t care either way. Like I’m not sitting on the edge of my seat while purple and gold and ugly green flash behind my eyes. “Yeah,” I croak.
Ben slowly drags his eyes from me and back to Landon.
The tension is so high I almost can’t breathe around it, filling the air and my lungs until I can almost taste it. I wait for Ben to take control, for him to grip Landon’s face and slam his mouth onto Landon’s the way he did mine, forcing his way past his lips with his tongue, taking what he wants.
Landon’s throat bobs heavily, and my anticipation ratchets up. I can’t decide if I want to look away or keep watching the two of them forever.
“Do you want me to?” Ben asks softly, inching closer to Landon like he can’t help it.
“If…” Landon pauses, swallowing hard. “If you, uh—want to.”
My throat aches, my chest burning in a way I don’t want to examine too closely.
It’s like a train wreck. I’m not sure my heart can withstand watching the carnage, but I can’t look away.
I inhale a deep breath as Ben leans in.
He doesn’t grab Landon’s face roughly. Instead, he brushes his knuckles against Landon’s jaw, soft and reverent.
Then he holds Landon’s chin between his fingers and thumb, tilting his head back.
My throat goes dry. What is he doing?
He closes the space between them, and both of their eyes fall shut. They’re a breath away, so close.
Landon’s chest rises and falls rapidly, then Ben presses forward, sealing his lips over Landon’s.
It’s… soft. Quiet. Pale pink streaked across baby blue. Like the sky at dusk.
Landon makes a breathless noise, something between a moan and a whimper, and my cock jerks. I place my hands over my lap, want and jealousy twisting my mind until I don’t even know what I’m feeling.
Ben answers Landon’s soft sound with a quiet moan of his own, sliding his hand from Landon’s chin to his hair, burying his fingers in the thick strands. Tilting his head, he coaxes Landon to open for him.
My heart’s beating hard, pounding incessantly against my ribs.
Look away. Look away. Look away.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.
Landon’s lips part, and Ben lets his tongue skate across the bottom one. I lick my own, wondering if Ben’s lips taste different with Landon on them. Wondering if I kissed Landon, if I’d find hints of Ben there.
With a shuddering breath, Ben pulls away.
Envy tears at the edges of my mind, replacing the want.
Ben didn’t kiss me like that at all.
He kissed me with passion and fire and lust. This was not that at all. I knew he liked Landon. I knew he did, and yet somehow, seeing the juxtaposition of this kiss versus the ones he shared with me has something dark and awful gnawing at my insides.
“Wow,” I say out loud.
“Yeah,” Ben breathes, voice wrecked and rough.
Landon hasn’t said a word. He’s just staring up at Ben in a daze, blinking slowly, like his entire world just tilted on its axis, and he’s not sure which way is up.
“I need to paint,” I say quietly. If I don’t get these feelings out, they’re going to explode, and I can’t have that. I can’t.
Leaving them alone in my bed, I jump to my feet, stumbling out of the bedroom and into the hall.
I lean against the wall, placing a hand over my frantically beating heart as I try to calm it down.
I thought maybe Ben saw me as something more than a hole to fuck, but I guess I was wrong. I’m not sure why I expected anything different from the man who literally took me home from class with the express purpose of hooking up.
But then again, when he saw me struggling, he didn’t try to keep going.
Nor did he leave me alone, and he didn’t make me feel bad or like he was only using me to get off.
He slowed us down. He got us cookies. He introduced me to true crime and basically made himself a permanent member of my apartment.
I need to paint.
Peeling myself off the wall, I stomp down to my little storage closet, pulling out a blank canvas, my brushes, and some paints.
I’d like to say I choose the colors at random, but I don’t. Forest green, lilac, pale pink. I leave the gold. It doesn’t belong in this painting.
Like the hounds of hell are nipping at my feet, I rush into the living room, tossing the canvas onto my easel.
I take a deep breath, then, not even bothering with a paintbrush, squeeze some green paint into the palm of my hand. Placing my hand on the center of the canvas, I drag it outward, leaving a ragged path of green across the white.
Then I do it again. And again.
I add green until it feels like the jealousy has been purged from my body.
Then I pick up the pink. The painting is ugly. I can already tell. It’s going in the trash. There’s no other way around it, but it’s worth it. Worth it to get these feelings out.
The pink goes on next, mixing with the green and creating a dull, muted gray. Fuck. That’s awful. My chest heaves as I toss the pink to the side, wiping a strand of my hair out of my face.
The paint cools my overheated skin, calming me down some.
I don’t even want to bother with the purple. I’ve already fucked up the painting, but I have to get it out too, so I fill my palm again, this time dabbing my hand over the green instead of rubbing it across.
It’s still not great, but it’s better than before. Better than the pink was. I drop the paint to the floor at my feet, staring at the canvas.
I feel better. Lighter. At least a little.
When I glance up, Ben and Landon are standing in the doorway. Landon is watching me in awe, but Ben seems concerned. I’m sure I look half-mad right now, but I can’t help it.
“Are you okay?” Ben asks softly, breaking the silence.
I almost laugh at that. “Of course I’m okay.”