Chapter 16 Harper #2
“Oh, um. Thanks.” My hands smoothed down the silky front of the dress as I struggled to catch my breath. No guy had ever said something like that to me before. “It’s not ‘sexy kitten,’ but…”
“You made that dress, didn’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
Orion groaned. He tossed his hat on a nearby hay bale and leaned against the wheel beside me. “What are we going to do with you, Bennett? I was trying to pay you a compliment.”
“I know,” I said. “But I don’t know what to do with the compliments, so I deflect with sarcasm. Classic coping mechanism.”
“We’ll have to work on that. So. Are you having a nice time with Xander Ford? Or is it Dean Yearwood? You two looked rather cozy on the dance floor.”
I tapped my chin. “Remind me who is who again? I have so many dates, they all start to blend together…”
“Hmph.”
“Didn’t take you for the jealous type.”
“I didn’t either.” Orion glanced at me sideways. “I’ve found my world rather upended these days.”
“Likewise,” I said. His cologne tonight was smoky and woodsy and smelled expensive, and he wore just enough to make a girl stupid. “You look…well.”
“Do I?” He grinned. “I look well.”
No, you look ridiculously handsome. More than enough to make a girl stupid.
“I meant, you look recovered from the other night.”
“Oh, that.” He waved a hand. “I knew I would. Still. It was good of you to come and weep over me.”
“Oh, hush up.”
His gaze softened. “I mean it. I appreciate it more than I can say. And you inspired me.”
“You went to the Student Health Office and got yourself checked out?”
Orion made a sour face, his eyes twinkling again. “Why would I do that?”
“Right. Silly me. What was I thinking?”
“I paid Professor Wolfe a visit,” he said. “Private lessons, twice a week, for that spring concert.”
My eyes widened. “Really? God, that’s a relief.”
“A relief?”
“Absolutely. You not playing the piano in any meaningful way is like owning a Rembrandt and stashing it in the attic.”
Orion looked away. “Come on.”
I arched a brow. “I’m trying to pay you a compliment.”
“Well, don’t,” he said, and brightened as a round of cheers went up from the stage. “Ah, there it goes. Our trophy. That’s what I meant by missing it. Someone else just snagged our Best Couple costume award.”
Of course, my stomach fluttered all over again at those words, no matter how impossible it all was.
“We’re not a couple,” I reminded him.
“Sure we are.” Orion indicated his suit and my dress. “We matched without even trying. Our costumes are from the same era.”
“Give or take forty years,” I said.
“Ugh, there is not one romantic bone in your body, is there, Bennett?”
“Not one.”
“We’ll have to work on that too.”
“When is all this work being done? And who is we?”
“We is us. Us is we,” Orion said, his voice growing low. Soft.
At those words, every part of me reacted with a warm, aching need, tinged by low-grade panic. I had to stay in control or else my life would collapse around me. But with Orion, I had no control. My emotions were chaotic, deep, and all of them were running straight to him.
I hugged myself tightly. “Orion…I told you the deal with my mother.”
“Is it bad, love?” he asked gently.
“It’s not good,” I said. “Teetering. She’s either going to haul herself back from the edge or she’s going to fall back into addiction. But so long as she’s having an affair with her married boss, my money’s on addiction. Bad choices beget bad choices.”
I looked over at Orion, so damn handsome and good and…
One of the greats. And I’m going to mess it up.
“I don’t want to make a bad choice that will end up hurting anyone in the end.”
Orion gazed down at me, as Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” played faintly from the dance floor. He stood up and held out his hand.
“Dance with me.”
“I thought we weren’t going to do this.”
“Do what? Dance?”
I shot him a wry look. “I know what you’re doing.”
He said nothing but waited, letting expectation and inevitability speak for him. I should’ve resisted. Protested. Stuck to my guns and all that, but what I wanted more than anything was to be in Orion’s arms, so I let him pull me to my feet.
He encircled me around the waist, his other hand taking my left and laying it over his chest. His heartbeat was strong, steady.
Not the rapid pounding that terrified me the other night.
His cologne wafted over me, and his body, so close to mine, was like a promise of safety and protection as much as pure attraction.
It took all my will, but I held myself apart, keeping some space between us. My one pathetic rebellion.
“This is a bad idea,” I said. “I’m not at your level, socially speaking.”
“I told you, I don’t care.”
“I do. I don’t want that kind of scrutiny.”
“You’re ashamed to be seen with me because I’m rich and popular? That’s one I’ve never heard before.”
I shook my head. “The bullying here is next level. I’d rather have a catfight. At least then it’s out in the open.”
Orion’s teasing expression vanished. “They’re not going to fuck with you again.”
“What are you going to do? Walk in front of me in the hallways all year? I don’t want you fighting my battles for me.”
“Then we’ll keep it on the down low,” he said with a shrug.
“You’d be okay with that?”
“Do I have a choice?” His gaze softened. “I just want to be with you.”
And that was the last straw. My head fell forward, onto his chest. “God, I’m such a sap.”
Orion chuckled. “Not even close, but we’ll get there.”
I turned and let my cheek rest over his heart. I melted against him, and the world with all its stress and tension melted away too. For a few precious moments, I just let myself exist in that perfect space, as he turned us in small, slow circles.
“For the record,” I said. “Being rich and popular are the least interesting things about you.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me more.”
“Tell you more about you? Well, you’re extremely humble…”
“Obviously.”
“You’re a good person.”
“Am I?”
I nodded against the smooth silk of his suit jacket. “I think, sometimes, you try too hard to make everyone like you.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Because you don’t have to try at all. You’re eminently likable. You have a good heart.”
“How do you know?”
“I can feel it. It pours out of you in everything you do. Your words. Your laugh. Your eyes. Most guys…they’re not bad, but they’re a dime a dozen. I would know. But you…”
It’s too much. Too good…
I pulled back. Orion’s dark eyes were liquid and rich in the dim light. He took my hand that was on his chest and encircled it tighter, clutching it. The arm around my waist tightened too, holding me closer.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Do what?” I whispered back.
“Pull away. Retreat,” he said. “Stay with me. Stay…”
I shook my head. “Ugh, look at me. Look at you. You show up in a suit, and I fold like a lawn chair.”
He grinned slightly. “That was the plan.”
“But I meant what I said the other night. I feel like my life is teetering on the edge too.”
“I know,” he said. “And I’m all kinds of fucked up, in case you hadn’t noticed. But that doesn’t mean I want to let you go.”
God, everything he said and did was sending me into the clouds, while my brain tried to keep me on solid ground where it was safe.
“Okay, but I need to say the thing that sounds like too much too soon, but I promised myself the next time I got involved with someone it would be something real. Not casual.” I looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t mean we have to put labels on things right away, or whatever. I just mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Orion said. “You mean you want to be taken out on a proper date.” He smiled. “I can do that.”
“But is this something you want? Something—”
“Serious?” Orion finished. He nodded and brushed a curl off my cheek. “I can do that too. I want to. And I love that you are saying all this. You tell it like it is. No bullshit. That’s one of the things I like about you best. You’re fierce. Strong.”
“I don’t feel that way.”
“But you are. And for a bloke who grew up in a silent household where no one talked about anything, this is going to be new for me, but let me give it a whirl. You’re the only person in this whole bloody school I want to talk to. Or look at. Or stand next to. There’s no one else.”
“So, it’s me by default?”
He gave me a flat look.
“Sorry. Coping mechanism.”
“Incorrigible,” he said. “No, it’s you by…what’s the opposite of default? Excess? Abundance?” His dark eyes were soft on mine but heated now. “I want an abundance of you, Harper Bennett.”
Now both of his arms were around my waist, pulling me closer, and both of my arms were around his neck.
My hand went to the back of his head, where his hair was short, before the little springs of his curls began.
I’d never touched him there before. His hands had never been at the small of my back.
Everything was new, every part of him unexplored and the anticipation was building in me to a fever pitch.
I wanted to be allowed to touch his cheek, his jaw, to put my mouth on his neck and kiss him softly there and inhale him.
“You know that feeling where you see your crush from across the room?” Orion asked. “A bittersweet ache. A hunger, almost, that hurts, because you want them so bad, but they’re not yours. Not yet.”
I nodded, my heart pounding.
“That hunger is tinged with excitement, too. Anticipation for the time when you have that person. When the longing is over.” His eyes seemed to darken somehow, his voice rough. “But the ache is so good, so fucking painful in the best way…you almost don’t want it to end.”
Dear God.
“Do you know that feeling?” he asked.
I nodded again. I feel it every time I see you.
But I couldn’t speak, could barely move, I was trapped in that feeling, and it was just like he said. I was yearning for his kiss in the worst way, and I wanted to stay in the purgatory of almost having it too.
Orion moved away just enough to look at me, his mouth inches from mine. “I’ve had that feeling before, but not like this. Not like tonight. With you.”