Chapter 16 Sweet Sixteen #2
“No,” I said, slumping down on the bed. “I don’t think anything could make me feel better right now, but not much could make me feel worse, either. I just feel so… Stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” he said. “You did the right thing.”
“You really think so?” I asked, looking up at him.
“I do,” he said firmly, sliding an arm around me and holding me against his side. “You’ll see, once you’ve gotten him out of your head.”
“I just… I spent a decade telling myself he’d love me one day,” I said, my breath hitching. “What if it was all wasted time? What if he never loves me?”
“Then someone else will,” he said. “Someone who won’t take you for granted because your families set you up and he knows you love him. Someone who sees you and appreciates you for exactly who you are.”
“You mean pathetic and blinded by love?” I asked with a little laugh, wiping my eyes. It seemed the tears were back for another round.
“I mean good and determined to see the good in everyone else,” he said. “And fucking brave.”
That made me really laugh. “I think you’re talking about someone else. Destiny was brave. It took me all year to work up the nerve to confront Devlin about a condom wrapper.”
“I think you’re brave,” Preston said. “I don’t think many girls would stand up to Devlin.”
“Yeah, well, once in five years isn’t the best track record. God, I’m an idiot. I let him treat me like his last priority for so long, Preston.”
“You went after what you wanted,” he said. “You didn’t hold back because you were afraid of getting hurt. You gave someone your whole self, even knowing he might not do the same.”
“Yeah, but I lost my whole self,” I whispered. “I loved him with my whole heart, and it wasn’t enough.”
“I’m sorry he didn’t give you the same in return, Doll.
But that doesn’t mean it didn’t take a hell of a lot of courage.
It just means you’re braver than him, that you’d risk yourself in a way he wouldn’t.
You deserve someone who can see just how fucking enough you are.
More than enough, Doll. You’re…” He broke off and shook his head, as if he realized how much he’d said.
Preston wasn’t a talker, at least not about serious things.
He’d flirt and made crude comments and talk football.
He didn’t do compliments or confessions of feeling.
I swallowed as I remembered what Devlin said during our breakup—that Preston was obsessed with me.
That seemed like an exaggeration. He sure as hell hadn’t been thinking about me for the past few years, when he was busy with every girl he could get his hands on.
But when our eyes met, the intensity of his gaze crackled over my skin like a static charge, as if I could feel the tangible force of his desire.
I froze, not moving even when he wet his lips and leaned in.
His gaze met mine, and then it dropped to my lips, his lashes casting shadows over his cheeks in the light from my lamp.
My face flushed with heat, and warm tingles spread over my body like they had the first time we kissed on the swing all those years ago.
He tilted his chin, letting his lips meet mine.
For a second, I didn’t respond, too caught in the moment, the spell of his desire.
It was intoxicating and suffocating and terrifying, everything that Devlin’s wasn’t, in the good ways and the bad.
I wanted to bask in the haze of Preston’s lust for me, his admiration.
The way he saw me was so different, so frighteningly addictive, that I kissed him back for a minute before I realized what I was doing.
When I did, I shoved him away, tearing myself free.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, wiping my cheek, still wet with tears from my heartbreak. I wasn’t ready to even think about someone else.
“I’m shooting my shot,” Preston said.
“Well go shoot it somewhere else,” I said, jumping up and holding out my hand to show him the tears I’d wiped away. “I’m literally crying over your cousin and you’re kissing me? Is that why you came over?”
“No,” he said, swinging his legs off the bed. “I wanted to make you feel better. You’re my friend, my—you’re fucking special to me, okay?”
“Or you thought you could get in my pants while I was vulnerable,” I said, glaring at him. “Isn’t that what you do? Get some girl to trust you by acting all sweet, giving her a diamond necklace, and then you fuck her and never talk to her again?”
He flinched. “That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” I demanded.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “That’s the kind of thing I do. But not to you, Dolly. Never to you.”
“Why would I believe you?” I asked. “What makes me so special? You’ve done it to every other girl in our group, probably used the exact same lines.
You must really think I’m stupid, Preston.
I guess now that I’m single, I’m fair game, right?
You couldn’t wait two hours before trying to hook up with me.
Do you have money riding on it or something?
A bet with Colt on how long I’ll hold out?
Or is it which one of you can score first? Should I expect a visit from him next?”
Without a word, Preston stood up and drained his wine glass, then dropped it into the basket. “You know what, I was wrong,” he said. “I’ll go.”
“Wrong about what?” I demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I was wrong about you seeing the best in everyone,” he said. “Maybe that’s true for everyone else. But all you see are my fuck ups.”
“What else is there to see?” I shot back.
He shook his head. “Nothing. You’re right. You see the worst in me, and that’s all you can see because it’s all you want to see. You save all your rose-colored lenses for Devlin.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, trying not to cry again.
“Isn’t it?” he asked, straightening to stare me down like a challenge.
I started to protest, and then I bit my tongue and took a breath.
He’d come here thinking I’d see the best in him, something no one else bothered to look for anymore.
I couldn’t let him leave thinking that I couldn’t find anything good in him, that there was nothing good there.
I knew better, despite his best efforts to hide it.
“Maybe you’re right,” I admitted. “Maybe I am harder on you than other people. But that’s because I know you, Preston Darling. I expect more from you. It makes me sad to see you acting the way you do when I know you’re so much better than that. So much more than that.”
He just stared at me a second, and then he shook his head. “If you knew half the shit I’ve done, you wouldn’t say that.”
“I know you came straight over to check on me when you found out Devlin and I broke up, because you knew I’d be devastated even if I’m the one who broke up with him,” I said.
“I thought I was just trying to fuck you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that.
I know that’s not why. It’s just, what would he think if he knew that I broke up with him, and didn’t even wait a day before I hooked up with someone else?
And not just anyone, but his cousin—his best friend.
He’d never touch me again, and rightfully so.
In fact, he’d probably think I was already seeing you behind his back, or at least that I dumped him to be with you. ”
“Why did you?” Preston asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just… I just got tired of waiting for him to love me. I guess I hope… Maybe he’ll realize it when we’re apart.”
Preston sighed and sank onto the edge of the bed again. He handed me the box of tissues and put his arm around me. “I love my cousin, but he’s a fucking idiot.”
“I thought you were leaving.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Doll. I can be the man you think I am. For you I can. You’ll see. I’m not here to fuck you. I just want to be here for you.”
I nodded, sinking into him. The kindness of his word undid me, and I started crying again.
After a while, the tears dried up, and we finished the bottle of wine, and then I cried again.
He turned off the lamp and pulled me down on the bed with him, pulling the blanket over both of us and holding me until I fell asleep.
I woke from a dream that had me already squirming, only to feel something—someone—between my legs. Still halfway asleep, I let out a little moan when I felt his mouth against me, his hot breath sinking through the fabric of my panties and making my center tingle with heat.
“Fuck, I want to taste you,” he groaned, pressing his nose deep between my thighs and inhaling. “You’re so soft.”
“Preston,” I mumbled, my brain swimming up from sleep in time to realize who he was, that I wasn’t with Devlin in my bed. That he could feel how big I was through my underwear, something no one but Devlin knew. “What are you doing?”
“Making you feel better,” he said, his finger hooking under the damp fabric of my underwear and drawing them aside.
“No,” I cried, my whole body tensing with nervousness. I grabbed his head, trying to pull him away.
Ignoring my hands, he ran his thumb back and forth over my swollen mound. “I’ve wanted this for so long. God, Dolly, I can’t wait anymore.”
His mouth met my bare skin, and my very soul quaked. He moaned, sending vibrations through me that made my toes curl and wetness bloom under his lips as he kissed me deeper, harder. “God, you smell so fucking good,” he said between kisses. “Like a good girl.”
His words made my hips buck of their own volition.
“You like that, don’t you?” he teased, nipping my skin gently and nuzzling my soft flesh.
“Yes,” I gasped, my fingers curling into the bedsheets. I squeezed my eyes closed, telling myself he didn’t care, that if he didn’t like it, he would have said something.
“Good girl,” he said, and he slid his tongue between my lips, his other hand gripping my hip to still my body.
Wetness flooded my center, and he moaned, a shudder going through his body, so powerful I could feel him quake with my thighs.
“Preston,” I whispered. “We can’t. I haven’t even showered.”