Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Lila had moved through the rest of the engagement party like a zombie. And then she had gone home, taken all her clothes off, gotten into bed and let herself finish what she had stopped herself from finishing out behind the barn.
She’d come so hard. She had seen spots, Nolan’s name on her lips.
The taste of him on her lips. The smell of him on her body.
And all they’d done was kiss. But what a hell of a kiss it had been.
She had avoided him since then, and tried to avoid thinking about it. She had gotten hers. Gotten a kiss, gotten off, and didn’t need to be the world’s biggest deal.
He was just doing some macho bullshit. It bothered him that she was having sex with another man.
He had wanted to be her first kiss.
The idea of letting Nolan be her first time...
It made her ache.
She wanted it, and she wanted it with a ferocity that she didn’t especially like.
She couldn’t make any sense out of it. She was tangled up, and the worst part was having the feeling that Nolan was too.
Was that possible? That he was as tormented by this as she was?
That he wasn’t just jealous that she was going to give her virginity to another man, but that he was throbbing like she was.
Fantasizing about being together, that he was jealous.
Not in that possessive, masculine way, but in a specific way that had come from that kiss.
That was actually the scariest thing she had ever considered.
Even scarier than trying to figure out what she was going to wear on this date where she was going to have sex with a man that she didn’t want nearly as much as she wanted another man.
How was this her life?
The day of the date, she wasn’t in any better of a frame of mind, and she sat on the edge of her bed in only her underwear for a very long time.
Then she cursed herself about twenty times for not taking the opportunity and time that she’d had between when she’d met Jason and when they had actually scheduled this date to buy sexier underwear.
The best she had was a black pair that was a little bit skimpy. The strings dented her hips and the little triangle in front barely covered her. The back was scant. Hotter, probably, than the boy shorts she normally wore.
As for a bra... she ended up deciding not to wear one.
Because the dress that she put on was tight enough to hold her rather small boobs in place.
Without all that much help, so she figured she would go with it.
If she gave a little nipple preview, if the air conditioning was turned up high, then all the better, probably.
That was the kind of thought that belonged to a different woman, but she was going to borrow it for the evening.
She needed to borrow something for the evening. Some sort of courage and confidence that she didn’t just innately have.
She decided to put makeup on. Real makeup, to the absolute best of her ability, and the end result was surprisingly good, she thought.
She had a little bit of glittery gold that she layered over the top of the brownish color she usually wore, which she had been brave and made a bit darker than she normally would.
She chose a lipstick that was a little bit more opaque, a reddish tint that she felt almost made her look like a woman who normally went out, normally spent time highlighting those aspects of her features.
She was driving herself to the bar. She wanted to have her own vehicle, she didn’t especially want Jason to know exactly where her house was on the resort. Maybe a little bit paranoid, but men were the number one danger to women, so was it?
One thing she also did before she went to the bar was stop at the grocery store and pick up a box of condoms. She felt a little bit awkward standing there clutching the box as people she knew walked by.
She waved slightly at one of her old schoolteachers and then sort of wished the floor would open up and swallow her.
But it was normal. It was fine. It was responsible.
There was nothing wrong with her buying condoms. Still, she felt like the cashier smiled weirdly at her as she rang them up. Then Lila opened the box in her truck and put a strip into her purse and threw the rest into the back seat.
Not that she didn’t think Jason would bring his own. He probably would. It was just... A girl had to be responsible for her own safety.
And Lila was the kind of person who had always taken responsibility for her own stuff.
Have you?
Somehow, that brought her back to kissing Nolan.
Well, what was she supposed to do about that? About the crush that she’d had on him all these years? There was no being responsible with it.
There was only—
She was brave. She had always been brave. When you didn’t have parents to protect you, you had to be. Yes, she had Cody and Walker. And she had Nolan.
But they were kids too, and as much as they had cared for her, she’d also had to stand on her own two feet.
But figuring out what to do about feelings for Nolan, feelings that had so obviously never been reciprocated, that wasn’t her not taking responsibility for herself or her actions or her feelings.
That was her doing the right thing even though it hurt.
That was her being smart. Self-protective. Self-reflective.
That was being realistic.
But he kissed you. And he was hard when he did it.
She shoved that thought to the side.
The reality was, fucking everything up, screwing up the ranch, the family dynamic, all that stuff just because she wanted Nolan. That was... No. She couldn’t do it. And worse, what if she slept with him and then...
She didn’t want to love him. More than anything, Lila did not want to be in love with Nolan because it would destroy her. She just couldn’t stand it. That would be the actual death of her, and she would rather sleep with a guy she didn’t want half as bad any night of the week than go through that.
The only man with the power to put her in therapy was Nolan.
And she just couldn’t risk it.
She pulled up to the bar, and her hands were clammy.
But she decided it was like ripping off a Band-Aid. She just needed to do it. Quickly. And without too much thought.
She put her truck into park, got out, and walked in.
And then she felt some of her tension dissolve.
Because Jason was sitting there at the bar looking friendly and relaxed.
And she remembered what she liked about him.
He was handsome, but he didn’t create feelings inside of her that were so big she couldn’t breathe.
He was handsome, but it wasn’t overwhelming.
It was fine.
It was just fine.
And that was just the right amount.
“Hey,” she said.
“Good to see you,” he said.
He got up out of the chair, and much to her surprise, wrapped his arm around her waist and gave her a quick kiss on the mouth.
“Oh. Right.”
She touched her lips afterward. Not because they were burning, not like they had been when Nolan had kissed her. It was because she felt... Nothing. Nothing but the press of his mouth on hers, and the vague discomfort that a stranger’s mouth had been there.
“So how are things?”
“Oh, good. I mean, you know,” she said.
She was distracted. Perturbed. She had a purse full of condoms and little desire to use them with the man sitting across from her, and the longer the date went on, the more apparent that was.
And it was the Nolan of it all again.
Now, she knew what it was like to kiss him. Now, she knew what it was like to be kissed, good and proper, by a man that you wanted. By a man whose mouth was wicked enough to make you come when that wasn’t even what he was trying to do.
She probably could have done it if she hadn’t known that. If she could have told herself that everything that she had banked inside of her when it came to Nolan was all fantasy.
That she didn’t actually know what it felt like to be kissed, what it felt like to be touched, and she was building it up into something impossible.
But now she knew she wasn’t. Now she knew that what she felt for him...
That was real. It was something she could feel in bed with him, skin to skin with him, his hands all over her body, and imagining that kiss that she had shared with Jason when she walked in as a touch, as hands on her skin.
As what it might be like when he was inside of her...
How could she do that? How could she do that when she knew there was something so much better.
She wanted to kill Nolan. With her bare hands.
Or better yet, she was going to make him pay. She was going to make him fix the thing that he had broken.
She had a drink with Jason. One drink.
“This was fun,” she said, getting up, trying to disguise the rage that was burning in her veins now.
Because if it weren’t for Nolan, she would be going home with Jason. She would be losing her virginity to the most low-stakes man on the planet. Instead, she was about to fuck everything up.
And it was all his fault.
“Do you want me to text you again?” Jason asked.
It was a genuine question, she knew that.
And maybe she shouldn’t answer just yet.
Because maybe she didn’t really know the answer.
Also, the idea of telling him to his face that she wasn’t that into him wasn’t her favorite.
“Sure,” she said, “There’s a lot going on at the ranch right now.
I’m not... I’m not really myself right now. ”
He kissed her on the cheek but didn’t walk her out the door, and she thought that was a little bit rude.
But maybe he was going to hook up with some other woman.
She had only been there for an hour and a half.
It was a pathetic date. It definitely wasn’t the hookup date that she had been building up to.
Definitely wasn’t the kind of thing that she had promised him with her actions.