Chapter 18 #2
Winder laughed, and it was the lightest he’d sounded all evening. It was a pretty sound. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t do it more. “You’re high, Blaire.”
“And?” It felt right to rest my head on his shoulder, to nestle my nose into the crook of his neck. There were no morals left in my brain to tell me no. I could make out every detail of the scorpion tattoo here, the slightly crooked tail. What would he do if I traced it with my tongue?
Winder sucked in a breath through his teeth. “And, you’re not thinking clearly.”
“Captain Boring to the rescue!”
There was a reason I shouldn’t be doing this. Something I told the girls in the kitchen. But it was so far on the edges of reality, it must be a lie. This was real, me and Winder. Cotton candy, they said. He looked at me like cotton candy.
Winder snorted. “Captain Boring saved your ass, so I wouldn’t be making too much fun.”
Whatever reason there had been couldn’t be a good enough explanation to say no. Everything right now felt too right.
I hummed into his neck, as he stomped up the creaky porch stairs to his house, empty for once. He unlocked his bedroom door without bothering to put me down, and let us both inside.
He sat me down on the bed, and tossed me a shirt from off the floor. “Change.”
“You’re so bossy.” I pulled the shirt over my head anyway, tugging the too small dress out from underneath. “I’m good.”
Winder turned around, and I didn’t miss the way his eyes traveled the length of my legs and back again, the small tic in his jaw reappearing. He shook his head slightly. “Bed. Now. You need to sleep this off.”
I frowned. “I’m really not tired.” I didn’t want to sleep yet. There were too many colors to explore, and everything felt so good, and I wanted to see Winder’s jaw muscle jump again.
“Bed.” Winder’s tone left no room for argument.
I flopped back on the bed, staring up at the patchwork ceiling, a kaleidoscope. “Winder?”
“Yeah?” He flipped off the light.
“Will coming down hurt?”
A quiet sigh drifted up from the floor, where I assumed he was getting his bed ready. “Yeah. It will. Getting high doesn’t make all those feelings not exist anymore. It just hides them for a little while.”
“Okay.” I didn’t want to feel all that again. I didn’t want to be sad Blaire, who didn’t know how she forgot things, and didn’t mind killing people. I liked it here, where it was safe and I was numb. “Winder?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you sleep in the bed with me? I don’t want to be alone when everything comes back.”
A beat of silence followed. Then two. “Blaire.”
“Please.” Desperation leached into my voice, and I hated myself for it. The idea of laying in this bed completely alone with my desperate, lonely thoughts was devastating.
Winder didn’t respond, but the shuffling sound told me he was coming up. He might not have liked it, but he had a hard time saying no to me. “Move over.”
I wiggled to the side, and Winder climbed in next to me, on top of the blanket. He lay with his arms at his side, a statue of a soldier. “I don’t bite,” I whispered.
Winder made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, and I didn’t understand what I said to cause him such discomfort.
For such a small bed, there was an ocean of space between us, and it wasn’t much better than being alone. I shuffled closer to him, until I could feel the heat radiating from his body, and the backs of our hands almost touched.
“I’m not sure this is the best place for me to be,” Winder murmured.
His words hurt, but not as much as they would have if I had been sober, and he didn’t try to move his hand away. Awareness of every inch of his body flooded through me. We weren’t touching, but we might as well have been.
“You kissed me at the party.” The inside of my cheek was raw with how much I’d chewed on it tonight.
“That was…a mistake. I was hoping to distract Leon, not that it worked, but I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m sorry.”
A lie. Winder was lying through his teeth to me. He could tell me all he wanted that the kiss was a distraction, and he didn’t enjoy it, but the truth was written all over his lips.
“Are you saying you didn’t like kissing me? Was I a terrible kisser?” I wiggled my hand so my pinky touched his, giving me a near electric sensation. We were two magnets, desperate to be touched, with an invisible force separating us.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffed. “You know you aren’t terrible.”
I hummed. “So you did like kissing me then. Why won’t you just admit it?”
“Because, Blaire. Does this really seem like the best idea to you? Think about it. Think long and hard before you answer.”
I stayed quiet, focusing on the colors still twinkling in front of me. I liked the molly. It let me speak my mind. “I don’t understand your problem. Do you like being miserable?”
Winder groaned. “I like not messing with karma, and making out with my brother’s girlfriend sounds like it would upset the balance.”
“But you liked kissing me,” I protested. I couldn’t see the problem. I liked kissing Winder. He liked kissing me. It was a simple equation.
“Don’t push me.” Winder’s voice was a thread, stretched taut between us. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
I wanted to watch it snap.
I threw a leg over his waist, swinging myself over into his lap. He groaned, so quietly I thought I might have heard wrong. “Do you want to kiss me again?”
“Blaire, don’t.” Winder’s voice was hoarse, and he kept his hands tight to his side, even though his face creased in physical pain. “I’m not a good man. I’m not my brother.”
I fell forward, resting my hands on his shoulders, the muscles tense beneath my touch. “Apparently, I’m no good either. I guess that makes two of us.”
His hand moved to rest on my hip, squeezing. “What are you doing?” he murmured.
“What I want, for the first time in my life,” I breathed the words against his skin, as if by feeling them, he would believe me.
His eyes looked sad, and he brushed his other thumb across my face. “I don’t want to break you.”
“Maybe you can put me back together instead.” I pressed my lips against his, and the last brick between us crumbled to dust.
Winder didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around me, pulling me flush against his body. His tongue slipped along the seam of my mouth, and with a groan I opened for him.
His hands moved lower, pushing up the shirt I wore, touching every bit of skin, and it still wasn’t enough. I needed all of him, everywhere, all at once.
With a smooth roll, he flipped me over onto my back, straddling me. Winder dipped lower, kissing the tender skin below my ear, while his hand twisted my wrists above my head. “You’re too fucking pretty for this world,” he whispered into my ear. “I want to corrupt you.”
I closed my eyes with a moan, arching up into his touch. “I need you, Winder.”
His mouth froze against my neck, and his hands released me. I blinked my eyes open, as Winder sat back.
A wild series of emotions crossed his face. “I can’t do this.”
“What?” The kiss left me dazed, his hands still burning my body. His change of heart baffled me, and all I wanted was for him to touch me again. Why couldn’t he see how right it felt?
Winder shook his head, climbing off me. “Not like this. This can’t happen like this.”
He leapt to his feet, and stormed off to the bathroom, while I sat with wide eyes and a cold heart wondering what the hell I had done wrong.