Chapter 19
aimee
Bone deep exhaustion brought on by the alcohol, and the never ending roller coaster of emotions made every part of me feel heavy.
I wasn’t even mad at Lukas. If he’d told me before the performance that day, I wouldn’t have believed him, not really.
It would have messed with my head, and I was already feeling weird about Asher, and what happened on the ice could have been worse?
Different? A different kind of tragedy? Or we could have skated perfectly and gone to the Olympics.
I squeezed Annalise’s arm before I shrugged out of her hug.
The point was, it didn’t matter.
“When…” his voice caught. “When I saw you after…I thought about telling you. But then, I was afraid that it would put you in the wrong headspace, and I know how dangerous that can be in sports.”
I nodded.
He would know about the detriments of not being in the right state of mind before a competition.
Asher and I performed with knives on our feet, so we had to be able to trust each other.
And if some random stranger had come up to me, telling me my partner was cheating…
I was already feeling insecure and confused.
I would have tried to stay focused, stay in the moment, but it would be in the back of my mind.
I sucked in a deep breath, and wiped the tears off my face. I opened my eyes and stared at Lukas.
He looked upset, and I found myself wanting to comfort him.
It was kind of strange. I wasn’t sure if I was just numb, or if I truly was done mourning what Asher and I had.
Like the final nail in the coffin of who we were, was Brittney outing their entanglement in that interview.
I wasn’t angry. Sure, there was a bit of hurt, but anger?
I couldn’t find it in me to be angry at Asher.
I stared at Lukas.
I was starting to wonder if he was the reason.
If what I felt…was starting to feel for him lessened the pain.
His presence had quieted the ghosts the first time I saw him, even when he was bumbling about. So I stopped thinking, and I moved forward, wrapping my arms around his waist, burying my face in his chest. I inhaled deeply, and the tension eased from my body as I inhaled his spicy cinnamon scent.
I felt his arms wrap around me and decided that I wanted to choose whatever this was between us.
“I was so mad on your behalf,” he said quietly. “By the time that qualifier came around, I was already crushing on you pretty hard, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to hurt you like that.”
I hugged him tighter, listening to his heartbeat thrum in his chest.
“And then when I saw you here…I wanted to tell you again. I could see how much you were still hurting over him, and I knew that you had no idea, but how do you explain to the girl that’s been occupying all your thoughts, who doesn’t know you exist, that you know her boyfriend was cheating on her?”
A surprised laugh bubbled out of me, and Lukas pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
“I think that’s why I said all the stuff I did. I couldn’t tell you the one thing I wanted to tell you, so everything else I knew just kind of spewed out…making me look like I stalked you for a living.”
Another laugh bubbled up, my body shaking with it.
“It’s not funny,” he said, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “That was not my finest moment. I thought I’d blown any chance at getting to know you.”
“Well, you didn’t really give her the chance to make up her mind…showing up at seven in the morning at our hotel room,” Eloise quipped from her slumped position on the couch.
I leaned back, so I could stare up at his face. “She doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Her alarm started going off before seven, and then she ignored it.”
“Be glad it went off! Otherwise, you wouldn’t have shown Lukas what he was missing out on.”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks when I remembered what I’d opened the door wearing.
“I can’t say I didn’t mind the view.” He grinned.
“Okay, that’s enough. I’m not talking about any more feelings or emotions in front of the peanut gallery,” I said.
“Oh, shush. I want to be here for when you two finally break the sexual tension and make out,” Eloise said, “It’s like one of my favorite rivals-to-lovers romance books, especially since we now know that Lukas was there that day.
And now would be the part where you two crash together in a drunken tangle of limbs and eat each other’s faces off. ”
“You have to let me borrow that book,” Annalise said.
Lukas arched a brow at me, a smirk creeping onto his lips, “Do you read these romance books?”
Heat suffused my cheeks, and his gaze went molten, and the alcohol seemed to reenter my body at full force.
Suddenly, I felt hot and slightly dizzy and more than willing to crash into him and let him kiss me senseless.
It would be such an easy way to turn my mind off—to get lost in him.
The feel of him, the taste of him. Do all the things I’ve only ever read about.
“Oh, she does,” Eloise chimed in.
“You should have heard her earlier,” Annalise said.
I crossed my arms and pouted. I had terrible, awful people in my corner. They sucked.
“And have you read this book that Eloise mentioned?” Lukas asked, a full grin on his face.
Is he closer to me now? I swear he moved closer.
I felt my heart rate kick up in my chest. My tears were long forgotten, my body was hot and if Lukas touched me right now—if his skin made contact with mine, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control myself. Heat was pooling low in my stomach, and I wanted more.
“Maybe,” I said, my voice too breathy to sound remotely normal.
“Mmmhh.” He hummed.
He definitely had moved closer, and it didn’t matter that Eloise and Annalise were still in the room with us—he reached out and trailed the tip of his fingers down my cheek, over my jaw and down the column of my throat.
My eyelashes fluttered, my pulse jumped and my breath shook as I inhaled—his scent mixed with the alcohol in my veins and if I hadn’t already been drunk, I would be now.
My eyes fell shut as his touch skimmed feather light across my collar bone.
“As much as I would love to play out this scene from Eloise’s favorite book, I’m not going to kiss you tonight, Aimee Bryant.”
Oh my god. That should not be as hot as it was. Fuck.
My eyes snapped open, and I wasn’t prepared for how close he’d gotten. A whine was just barely trapped behind my lips and maybe it was pathetic but I didn’t want him leaving here without having tasted him. He was right there. If I came up on my tiptoes, our lips would meet.
“You’re drunk, and I won’t have our first kiss be something you won’t remember,” he breathed across my lips.
He took a step back and then another, and panic set in.
The small, still probably sober, logical part of my brain screamed at me that he was being a gentleman.
and I should be happy he respects me enough.
But the larger part—the very much drunk and emotionally wrecked part of me roared that if he left without kissing me—without dousing the flame of want and need burning inside of me, I could combust.
So as he took another step away, I launched myself at him, the voyeurs be damned. He caught me as I reached up, pulled his face towards mine, and kissed him.
I needed this.
I needed to be reminded that there are good things, and I needed to remember what being wanted felt like.
Lukas didn’t hesitate, despite his whole I won’t kiss you while you’re drunk speech. His lips were warm and firm against mine. It took only a few seconds for him to take over, his hands cupping the sides of my face—tilting my head back to deepen the kiss.
My hands were trapped between us, still gripping his shirt.
I knew there was no chance in hell that I would forget this—the feel of him, the touch of his hands, the press of his body against mine.
And for a single moment, my brain flew back to the last time someone held me like this, and there was nothing—no guilt, no remorse, not even anger.
His hands moved from my face, and his arms wrapped around me, trapping me while he devoured me.
The room faded as I melted into him. Nothing else mattered — nothing that came before, nothing that might come after.
He kissed like he wanted to own, to possess and I wanted nothing more than to let someone take over, take ownership.
His tongue pressed against mine, tasting…
taking. It swept over every inch of my mouth and I couldn’t get enough.
Asher had been tame compared to this—his kisses had been sweet, reassuring.
Never had I felt like I was going to suffocate, and do so gladly.
Never had I felt his touch through my whole body.
I’d been na?ve, a young girl in love, believing the boy could never hurt me.
Lukas broke the kiss, and I sucked in air, already missing the feel of his lips on mine.
One of his hands skated up my body—leaving a trail of fire from my hip to my shoulder, and he gripped my jaw.
His fingers sliding around the back of my neck, his thumb lightly pulling on my lower lip and heat pooled low in my belly and further still.
His eyes were half lidded, molten chocolate pools as he stared at my mouth.
I wasn’t sure if he realized he licked his own lip as he stared, as his thumb brushed lightly over my swollen ones.
I wasn’t sure I was breathing until his thumb tugged ever so slightly and a gasp fell from my mouth.
I was watching him, as he was watching my lips and I wanted him to kiss me again.
My hands were still fisted in his shirt—probably forever wrinkling it, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go.
It felt like if I did, the moment would be over and I would never get it back.
Someone cleared their throat, and we both startled. My hands let go on pure instinct, and Lukas backed up a few steps putting space between us.
“So, forget the book—let me just follow the two of you around while you fall in love.”
Embarrassed heat suffused every part of my body as I turned to look at Eloise and Annalise who were sitting on the couch, staring with shit eating grins on their faces.
“I’m going to have to teach Orion how to kiss like that, because holy fucking shit,” Annalise said.
She turned and looked at Eloise. “Is it possible to get pregnant from watching a kiss?”
“Before that, I would have said no. I need to teach Cami as well, because I want that.”
I covered my face with my hands and wished that a hole would open up below me and swallow me whole. I felt Lukas’s hand on my arm, gently trying to pull my hands away. I shook my head and prayed that I would disappear. I was drunk, but apparently not drunk enough.
“Did you see how he kissed her?” Annalise shouted through a whisper.
“The way he looked at her after—that thumb thing with her lip…” Eloise said.
I wanted to actually die. I hated my friends. They sucked. So much. I don’t know why I never realized it before, but they were terrible, terrible people. Lukas chuckled as he managed to pry my hands away from my face.
“I think you need to confiscate your friends’ romance books,” he said.
“Oh, I plan to burn them all when I get home.”
Eloise squawked—that was the only description I could come up with, for the noise that escaped her mouth. “Aimee Marie Bryant, you will do no such thing.”
I opened my mouth to throw back a retort that was still loading in my brain, when Lukas kissed me again and every thought ceased existing in my head and I melted into him.
My hands weren’t clenched in the fabric of his shirt this time, so they fell about his shoulders and my fingers found themselves pushing through the soft hair at the nape of his neck.
His arms came around my waist, and up my back pressing me to him, and I was gone.
This kiss didn’t last nearly as long, but it left me blissfully unaware. He chuckled again, kissed my nose and somehow I was deposited on the couch next to my nosey as shit friends.
“I’ll text you in the morning. I promised to take you skiing, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
I just kind of stared at him blankly, my brain still hazy from the second kiss, which somehow was better than the first one, and if he always kissed me like that—no, he needed to always kiss me like that. This might be a problem. I was going to be needy if he kept kissing me like that.
“You’re just going to leave her?” Eloise asked incredulously.
“Are you all not spending the night in here?” He asked.
“You made her go quiet,” Annalise said at the same time as Lukas’s question.
I blinked slowly, still coming down from the kiss.
“Lukas, come on. After a kiss like that, you’re supposed to take her upstairs and blow her back out,” Eloise said—apparently alcohol completely got rid of the tiny filter she had.
I heard Annalise choke, and my face heated.
Lukas bent down and caught my gaze. His voice was like warm honey as he spoke, his fingers once again trailing down my cheek, his thumb once again catching my bottom lip. My eyes didn’t leave his as he stared at me.
“As much as I would love to take you back up to my room, and blow your back out, as your friend so eloquently put it, you’ve been drinking, and I will not be doing that…tonight. Beautiful drunk girls cannot give consent.”
“But I kissed you,” I breathed, his thumb moving with my lips.
“Yes, and against my better judgment, I let you, and kissed you back,” he said, his gaze dropping to my lips, before it bounced back to mine.
“Do you regret it?” I whispered, really wishing Eloise and Annalise were literally anywhere else besides sitting next to me.
I felt like making really, really bad choices that would be so good. Lukas leaned in, his thumb doing that little brushing motion on my lip and it was taking every ounce of self-control to not lick it.
“Not. At. All,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine, and holy shit.
He stood up and walked away, leaving me sitting nearly panting and definitely wanting on the couch as he grinned and shut the door to the library behind him.
“I think I might need to go change my underwear,” Eloise said.
And I grabbed a pillow and buried my face in it and squealed.