Chapter 26
Izzy
I finish up in the bathroom and slip back into Nik’s room, giving him a tentative smile. I couldn’t stand the sight of him
with Cooper when everything was so precarious with us, and I’m glad about what just happened, but I still feel fragile. On
edge. I could have sworn that something about the way he looked at me as he told me to come for him was... different. Possessive,
and not just in the way guys naturally get when they have a woman in their bed. This felt ravenous, as if he’d have torn apart
whoever asked me on a date instead.
There’s more to his past than he’s letting on. Whatever led to his parents’ divorce, whatever makes him stiffen at the mere
mention of his father—there’s a deep wound there, and I’d bet anything that it has to do with his scar. If he’s truly been
as lonely as Katherine claimed, I doubt he’s told many people about it. Perhaps no one at all. The thought makes me want to
wrap him up in a hug.
I curl beside him in bed. He tucks a bookmark into the mystery novel he’s reading, setting it aside as he puts an arm around
me. We were just as intimate as ever, and yet this feels more dangerous than being on my knees for him. Despite all the time
we’ve spent together, I haven’t stayed over at his dorm. I always drive back, calling him as soon as I get to the house. Maybe
this is reckless, but I did make Cooper believe I was going on a date. We might as well milk it for all it’s worth.
“The Rift shirt again?” he says, plucking at the sleeve.
“You need to do laundry.”
“Call the dry cleaner, you mean.”
I shake my head fondly. “I was wondering how your shirts have perfect creases.”
“Mm.” He kisses my hair. “Like I’d insult my suits with the school washing machines.”
I twist, so I can kiss him properly, and revel in the way his hand slips down to press against my lower back. I let myself
get lost in his clean scent, our shared minty breath, the way he shivers when I cup his jaw. When we eventually break for
air, his eyes are gleaming. He turns off his bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. My eyes slowly adjust to the moonlight
drifting in through the window.
He kisses me again, hard enough our teeth scrape together.
“Can I ask you something?”
I nod, twisting in his embrace so I can trace down his bare chest.
“Did you mean what you said the other day? No other guys have made you come?”
I’m glad he turned off the light, so he can’t see my blush. When I saw Jeremy, who I slept with three times last year, outside
of Lark’s, I panicked, and blurted out that secret. I’d hoped Nik forgot about it, given all that happened after, but apparently,
I’m not that lucky.
“Yeah,” I say, focusing on his sternum. “No one else. Just you.”
I expect gloating, but instead, I get a scowl. “No one took care of you properly.”
“I’m grateful,” I admit. I almost stop there, but something pushes me to continue. Maybe if I open up more, eventually, he’ll
do the same. More than that, I want to share this secret with him. “In high school, my boyfriend Chance, he... he made me feel like it was my fault that I couldn’t do it, that it was why he had to cheat on me with a bunch of other girls in our class.”
“Is he the guy who broke up with you on your birthday? He did that and he cheated on you?”
I nod. “I know it’s stupid.”
I don’t miss Chance, not even a little, but I gave so many firsts to him, and they weren’t even good firsts. If I could go
back, I’d erase the entire relationship, start to finish. I offered him so much of myself, and he trampled it all. I was never
enough for him, not in general and definitely not in bed, and he turned my trust into a joke.
Nik swears softly, his scar thrown into sharp relief by a stripe of moonlight. “I’m sorry.”
“We were together for ages. And then the night we were going to celebrate my seventeenth birthday, he stood me up. I found
out that he had been cheating on me pretty much our whole relationship.” My heart lurches at the memory. “He has another girlfriend
now, by the way. I guess it wasn’t that he couldn’t be faithful, he just didn’t want to try for me.”
“He’s a fucking asshole,” he says shortly. He pulls me even closer, tucking my head underneath his chin. “There’s no excuse
for that.”
I drag my teeth across my lip. Tears prick my eyes, more out of embarrassment than sadness. I stopped crying over Chance long
ago, but I haven’t gotten past the mortification of realizing my entire relationship was a lie.
“I guess. And when I got to college, I... I still couldn’t do it, no matter who I was with. Orgasm, I mean. I thought something
was wrong with me. But I met you, and it’s been different.”
His fingers dig into my hip. Grounding me in this moment, in his bed. “You deserve to feel that good. To be taken care of.”
“Maybe.” My voice wobbles.
At least we’re in the dark. Like this, I can pretend there’s still plenty of distance between us.
He wipes away an errant tear. “Definitely, Isabelle.” His voice sounds so quiet, so serious, but then it takes on a more playful
edge. “Where is this guy now?”
I squint at him. “Nik.”
“Just asking.”
“He goes to college in Indiana.”
Whenever I’m home on Long Island, I wonder if I’m going to cross paths with him. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened, but never
say never. Part of me dreads holiday breaks for that reason. I have zero idea what I’d say to him if we were face-to-face.
Probably nothing.
Nik makes a contemplative noise. “None of those guys realized how rough you need it, huh?”
“ I didn’t even know. How’d you figure that out?”
“I just did what I wanted to do to you,” he murmurs against my ear. “What I imagined from the first moment I saw you.”
“Dirty,” I whisper back. “I can still feel you, I hope you know that.”
“Good,” he says, the weight in that one word making my belly clench. “I’d have failed if you couldn’t, sweetheart.”