18. Lilah #2
“And you can seriously leave.” I gingerly pulled the dress out of his grasp and set it into the trunk, slamming the lid closed.
“Why do you keep pushing me away?” Hand frozen on the lid, we were a modern art installation called Can You Ever Regain Her Trust?
“Because I—” A sweeping flame of anger blazed through me.
Right now, pissed was the only thing I could be. Angry and annoyed that I couldn’t push him away nearly as hard as I should and that sparked a tinder in my stomach. Why wouldn’t he make this easier? Why couldn’t we go back to how things were before the summer?
“Because I’d rather not give you a second chance and risk you hurting me again. And after that stupidity at your game, hurting yourself. It’s not worth it, Mason. None of this is worth it. I’m not worth it.”
“Seems I haven’t been working as hard as I should.”
I whipped my head toward him. “What is wrong with you?” I got in his face.
His determined but soft expression made my heart trip with satin-wrapped fear. He wasn’t going to stop pushing me to get back to where we were before. He wanted to keep fighting for me. A new swell of emotions tugged me closer until our noses almost touched.
Another beat of stunned silence, then I knotted those feelings up and tried a different angle.
“I forgive you, okay? I’m not hurt by it. I’m perfectly fine. All better. Like it never happened. Now go!” I shoved away from him and tried to march past, but he grabbed my shoulders.
The rough pads of his fingers grazed the sides of my neck. “Don’t you think I would if I could? If I could stop thinking about you and leave you alone like you keep asking me to?”
“Stop trying to make it up to me. You got jealous, turned into a massive jerk, realized you were wrong and we’re good now.” I tried to shrug him off. “Just forget about it.”
But he held on to me, eyes glinting with a maelstrom of emotions. “But I can’t forget it, Lilah. I can’t forget a single moment.”
I stared at him, fanning the flames of my anger because they were the only thing keeping me from cracking.
“Can you?” he asked. “What about the night we almost kissed before it all went so wrong?” His gaze dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat.
“Every night was the best part of my day. And I want that again.”
“There’s a lot of things I want that I can’t have,” I told him. Lock these feelings down. My blood whooshed through my veins.
He raised his hand and dragged his knuckles along my jaw. “Why can’t you?”
“Because they’re not real.” The words escaped through gritted teeth. Pulsing feelings pumped through me, more than just anger. Only anger would be understandable, acceptable, easy. But none of this was easy.
“You’ve had my heart for longer than you know.”
I exhaled a broken huff of a laugh and tried to gather the frayed edges of my resolve, but with his hands on me, thinking was nearly impossible.
“We had fun. It was whatever. You’d have lost interest the second school started anyway.
But you’ve built this thing up in your head and you’re feeling guilty. That’s all.”
A drag of his thumb across the skin below my bottom lip sent tingling flares down my spine. “Is it easier to fight me than trust me?”
“Yes,” I gritted out, my chin still in his grasp. Our eyes locked, his gaze searching my face while his fingers almost imperceptibly rubbed against my skin.
A flutter and swoop danced in my stomach.
He moved in closer, lips a breath away.
Anticipation flared in a deep pulse between my thighs. The thread connecting us wasn’t spider-web thin anymore. It vibrated so loudly that there was a hum in the air.
His lips brushed against mine. “Then fight me.”
And I was lost to the rising tide of giving in to what I’d been craving and denying myself all this time.
His fingers wrapped around the back of my neck, holding me close, and for once I didn’t force myself to stay still.
First, he was hungry for my lips like he could barely restrain himself, then my grip of self-control slipped away, and I matched his thirst with my own.
I fisted the front of his shirt and pulled him in even closer.
Our tongues danced and brushed against each other.
I poured all my frustration and hunger into this and he met me with even more.
This was a deluge of desire and I was drowning.
Finally, I could let myself want something for myself. Not shove down every longing and every desire and always stick to the plan. Mason was decidedly off-plan, and his lips on mine made me forget that anything existed outside of this moment.
“I know, she’s such—Mason!” Kelsey’s voice sliced through the fog of lust blotting out the rest of the world.
I jerked back, but Mason’s grip on my neck kept me close.
He rested his forehead against mine, slowly released me.
“H-hi, Mason.” Kelsey toyed with the end of her hair.
“Eliza, Kelsey.” He nodded to each of them before disappearing through the still opened door with a glance back at me that sent spirals of desire heating my face. And then he was gone.
Kelsey’s gaze snapped back to mine. “What the hell was Mason doing here?”
I turned away from them, cheeks on fire, and reached into my trunk to lift the hastily tossed-in dress back out. “He came by to say hi.”
“That was a lot more than ‘hi.’ I thought you’d paid him off to be nice to you at school or something?” Kelsey got in my space, suspicious eyes looking over me from head to toe.
I bit the inside of my cheek. Those warm, tingly feelings dripped away into smoky, barbed ones. “I doubt there’s any money anyone could pay Mason to do something he didn’t want to.”
“So now he wants to maul your face?”
“Kelsey, leave her alone.”
“No, I think she owes us an explanation. Our mom abandons us to our sperm-donor father all because ‘Lilah’s done so well living with him,’ so she can go globe-trotting with her new husband. We get dropped into a new school. Our half sister is a social pariah and we get no warning.”
Neither had I. Gently folding the dress, I stuck the tissue paper between the layers, so the glass beads didn’t scratch. I slipped it all back into the satin bag to protect it. At least there was one thing I could protect, since I couldn’t protect myself.
Where were my gentle tissue-paper layers and soft, cozy place to be tucked away? As it was, I didn’t even have a room to retreat to. And Kelsey’s bag was sitting on my pillow.
“And now all of a sudden, Mason Shaw is in here making out with her? Is this one of those bully during the day, make out at night things?” She scoffed. “I’d have thought you’d have had more self-respect than that.”
I stared at her bag, making dark smudges on my pillow, and wanted to scream.
“Kelsey, stop. Remember the pep rally. He tried to give her his jersey.”
A jersey almost the same color as the only other finished dress I had of my mother’s. I ran my fingers over the fabric peeking out from the little folded pouch I’d made and pushed it back inside before re-cinching the bag.
“You’re not going to say anything?” Kelsey stared at me, arms crossed and eyes narrowed as if I’d offended her by kissing Mason.
“Whatever happened or happens with Mason is none of your business. I don’t owe you anything, least of all an explanation.” With that, I grabbed her bag, shoved it back at her and stormed into the bathroom.
The lingering call of “bitch” followed right behind me. And Eliza’s “leave her alone.”
In the bathroom, I ran the cold water and splashed my face until I couldn’t feel the flushed and overheated sting of annoyance trying to burn me up from the inside.
I gripped either side of the sink and stared at myself. I ran a finger over my lips.
“What are you doing, Lilah?”