Chapter 12 Sloane #2
Famous last words, apparently, because that’s what I said a few days ago. Can you blame me, though? I just want to know what it feels like to be kissed by someone who wants me as much as I want them.
“We shouldn’t,” he whispers, pulling me flush against him. His fingers tangle into my hair as he pulls our foreheads against each other.
“Do you want to?” I murmur, our lips nearly touching.
“You already know the answer to that.”
His other arm wraps around me, giving me no room to escape. No way to wiggle out of his grasp even if I wanted to, but I don’t. I like being this close to him, a lot more than I want to admit.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“If I start, I don’t think that I’ll be able to stop,” he whispers, pulling my leg up around his hip. I can feel just how much this is already affecting him.
I gasp as I feel the size of him, the way he’s not even all the way hard yet, and he feels huge.
“You feel what you do to me, baby?”
“Beckett,” I whimper as he dips his head and his nose nuzzles my neck. His lips gently brush against my skin, sending tingles all over my body.
“Don’t do that,” he says, his fingers tightening their grip on my hips.
“Do what?” I whisper, my fingers running through his hair, still a little messy from his shower.
“Don’t say my name like that. You have no idea what it does to me.” He rolls us so that I’m underneath him, and I feel like my heart is beating a million miles a minute.
He picks his head up from my neck, probably because he can feel the tension in my body. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing,” I whisper, my cheeks flushing. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. I’ll never be good enough for him, never be pretty enough, never be experienced enough.
His eyes soften as they search mine. “Talk to me, baby, please. If you don’t want this, tell me,” he says, cupping my cheek, his thumb brushing softly against my skin.
I take a deep breath. “I’m…I’m not very experienced,” I whisper, my cheeks turning even redder.
“It’s ok, baby, we don’t have to do anything that you’re not ready for. We can go as slow as you need,” he whispers, and it eases my nerves a little.
I nod.
He looks at me for a few moments. His thumb gently caresses my cheek. His eyes search mine. He makes me feel calm.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, and I nod slowly. Despite my sudden nerves, I want to kiss him more than anything.
His eyes search mine for any sign of hesitation before he gently leans down and presses our lips together.
The kiss is soft, the kind that tests boundaries.
After a few seconds, he pulls away, his eyes finding mine again as they flutter open.
He kisses me again, this time a little harder, our lips moving together. My arms wrap around his neck, pulling him closer to me. Wanting to feel every inch of his strong body against mine.
He doesn’t stop me, letting me set the pace, letting me pull him closer to me.
“You taste so good,” I whisper against his lips as his tongue slides against my bottom lip.
His hands grip my hips, and he gently grinds into me. His lips trail down to my neck, over my jaw, and slowly nibble on my ear.
“You like this, baby?” he whispers, his hands staying on the outside of my clothes but still wandering slightly.
“Mhmm,” I hum, my head falling back, giving him more room to work. He buries his nose into my neck and breathes me in, enough to make me whimper when he pulls away. He brushes a piece of hair out of my face and looks at me.
I feel a little insecure under such an intense stare. I feel my face heat up, and I have the urge to cover myself up even though nothing is showing since I’m wearing a hoodie.
“Let’s go watch a movie,” he whispers after several seconds of silence. I don’t know how to use my words, so I just nod.
He gently rolls off of me and helps me stand. We collect the blanket and my trash before going inside and making ourselves comfortable on the couch, cuddled up like this, is how it was always supposed to be.
Sunday afternoon, we head to the parts store to get some things so that we can work on the Camero.
We’re looking for something that is crazy specific when I catch movement from the corner of my eye. I freeze when I hear the voice that’s attached to it.
“Mr. Hayes,” Jackson Madison asks, his voice overly enthusiastic.
“Jacks, what’s up?” Beckett says, straightening up and extending his hand to Jackson. I act like I’m not here and continue to pretend that I know what I’m looking for as the two of them talk.
My blood runs cold when the attention shifts to me. “Orbit, is that you?” He says the nickname so casually as if it were my actual name, and not one of the many names I was called while in high school.
I straighten and paste a fake smile on my face, pretending like I don’t want to just sink into a hole and never be found.
“The one and only.” I fight the urge to tug on my shirt or to wrap my arms around myself to hide my body.
I suddenly feel way too underdressed in my cropped tank and shorts.
I should’ve worn sweats and a hoodie. I knew that I was going out in public.
I wait for the rude words to hit me, but they never come. Instead, what does leave his mouth renders me speechless.
“There’s a party at my place on Friday, you should come,” he says with a smile, throwing in a wink.
“I’ll think about it,” I lie, keeping my smile on my face even though the thought of going to his house makes me want to projectile vomit from anxiety.
“Cool, see you round,” He says, bidding us farewell.
I turn back to the shelf to look for the part, my whole day ruined by one stupid person.
I should’ve never come back here. There are way too many people that I know. Way too many bad memories that already follow me around.
We fall into an awkward silence as we continue to look for Beckett’s part.
When we get back to his house, I go inside while he goes back out to the shop. I change into different clothes and lie on my bed.
Orbit. It shouldn’t mean anything to me. It’s just a stupid word.
“Sloane, can I come in?” Beckett asks, tapping on my door twice. I take a deep breath, wipe my eyes, and answer him.
“Yeah.”
My voice is weak when it comes out. Pathetic. Just like the rest of me.
He opens the door and leans against the doorway. He looks at me for a few long seconds before he speaks.
“I made dinner.”
“I’m not hungry,” I whisper.
He stands there silently while I just stare at the wall so that I don’t have to look at him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
He invites himself into my room and sits on the edge of the bed. His hand lands on my leg, and he gives my calf a gentle squeeze.
“I can have the party busted. I’m sure there will be underage drinking,” he offers.
I shake my head. “Not to tell you how to do your job, but you don’t have to do that for me. It doesn’t matter, it’s just a stupid word.”
“Maybe so, but I saw how you reacted. How uncomfortable he made you.”
I don’t say anything. I can feel his eyes on me, but I refuse to look at him. Afraid that if I do, I’ll cry.
“They gave me the nickname in high school. I don’t know who started it, or why. But they did, and I don’t think that it’ll ever leave me.”
“Kaden let them call you that?” He sounds angry.
“It started after him and Mase graduated. When everything started going downhill, when I just stopped caring about everything.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They said that I was so big I had my own gravitational pull.”
“What else happened?”
“I really don’t think that you want to know,” I whisper. I’m really not sure that I can talk about it in detail without falling apart completely.
“I do. I want to know how often you were alone, and no one was there to help.”
I let out a bitter-sounding laugh as I sit up and face him.
“My life was hell. I’ve never had anyone.
Ever. There have only ever been a few people in my life that I cared about outside of my family, and they both turned out to be the fucking worst of them all.
Every day, I hate myself for falling for them.
For letting them hurt me in the way that they did. ”
He stares at me for a long time, giving my leg another gentle squeeze to let me know that he’s listening. His eyes say that he’s here if I want to talk. Maybe it’s time that I tell someone who won’t just brush it off as my parents did.
“Junior year, I made a friend. She was new to school and didn’t know me. She didn’t know that I was an outcast, that I was the farthest thing from having a life inside that stupid school.”
“Amy, right?” Beckett asks, and I nod.
“My parents were so happy for me. I’d finally put myself out there and made a friend. I was happy for myself. You remember, obviously, since she came with me to everything. My parents wanted me to show her off like she was a trophy. A way for them to tell everyone that I was normal.”
I wipe away a tear that rolls down my face. I never realized how much this affected me still. This is one of the big reasons why I struggle to trust people.
“I caught her with Kaden,” I say, not beating around the bush.
I take a deep, shaky breath. “I was willing to forgive her. I told her that I understood. As humans, we can’t help who we fall for.
That both Kaden and I could be part of her life, me as a friend and him as whatever was growing between them.
She laughed at me. Like, actually laughed in my face.
She told me that she had no interest in me; she never did.
She’d used me to get to Kaden. I don’t know how long they hooked up for, but I know that I never saw her around the house after we stopped being friends. ”
“I’m sorry that you had to go through that. No one deserves to be treated that way,” he says, his thumb rubbing soothing patterns over the material of my sweats.
“That’s not even the worst. Carter was so much worse.”
“The boys’ friend, Carter?”