Chapter 11 Leo
ELEVEN
leo
“It is so beautiful in here, ugh!” Vanessa said across from me. “So green.” She giggled next.
I forced a smile and nodded. “For real.”
She reached across the table, placing a hand atop mine and then closing her hands over it.
“I’m so happy you asked me to come out with you tonight, again,” she said with a playful smile. “Three nights in a row, it’s like we’re reliving our first summer together. I feel like I haven’t seen you this much in forever.”
I lifted my glass of brandy to my lips to take a sip.
“But I don’t hold that against you, so please don’t think I do,” she added, her eyes softening as she looked at me. “I know you’ve been through a lot, so I totally understand your absence.”
All I could do was nod.
“A whole baby.” She cringed, shaking her head. “How are you coping, anyway?”
We were at Celestine Sky, a socialite's dream. It was a favorite amongst celebrities too. A fact that played a part in me asking Vanessa to have dinner with me here. I’d been asked for my autograph at least five times since we’d arrived and honestly?
I needed that shit. I needed all the distractions and extra interactions.
On any other day, it would frustrate me a little, but tonight I needed it more than ever.
Vanessa lifted her menu to her eyes. “What are you thinking about getting?”
When she did that, she moved the air a little in the room, sending the fruity, floral notes of her perfume across the table.
Her perfume was the first thing I noticed when my driver picked her up from her apartment. It made me skip a breath. And it made me skip a breath again sitting across from her.
It was the same perfume Ivy wore. Besides knowing it was the same perfume from scent alone, I knew it was the same because I was the one who bought the fragrance for Vanessa after smelling it on Ivy two summers ago.
Big mistake. Because just like earlier, when I got the first whiff of Vanessa’s perfume, my mind pulled me back to that night with Ivy in an instant when I smelled it on Vanessa again.
Ivy and I laid there for what felt like forever, long after catching our breath.
Once the moment set in, and the realization that what had happened, had happened, I guess neither one of us wanted to look at each other.
I decided to be the brave one, inhaling a deep breath and pulling away, breaking our connection below the waist.
Ivy let out a soft sigh when I created distance between us. She immediately pulled her legs to herself while tugging at the hem of her oversized tee in an attempt to cover the lower half of her body.
When we finally looked at each other, we just stared. It was so quiet in my room I could hear her heart beating.
My eyes were on fire, burning from lack of sleep, burning from being up at an hour I shouldn’t have been, and burning after crying.
I was crying. Thought it was too late to have been heard.
All due to a dream I had of Tyrell. He didn’t say anything in the dream but looked happy.
And I kept telling him how much I missed him, how much life had changed since he’d been gone.
The dream didn’t last very long, and I felt so fucking incomplete when I got up suddenly from it.
Instead of going back to sleep, I was filled with so much emotion I couldn’t fight back, and I just broke down, crying on my bedroom floor… until Ivy showed up.
We were staring at each other now. After… everything. All of that. All the sensations, and emotions, and other things I couldn’t quite put names to.
“We didn’t use a condom,” were her first words to me. She said them low, as if she were saying it to herself.
“Are you still on birth control?” I rasped.
She nodded quickly.
“Aight.” I swallowed hard. “So, then… we’re good… right?”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
“I always use a condom,” I said, clearing my throat. “This is the first time I didn’t, so…”
“Same.”
Ivy inhaled an audible breath and was about to say something else when we heard the sharp cries of Baby Love from his nursery. Ivy gasped next. Both of our attention went to my door that was still open.
No doubt all that shit we just did woke him from sleep. I’m pretty sure we woke the whole fucking neighborhood… or what was of it.
“I’ll get him,” I told her, turning to focus on her again. “I got it.”
It was my attempt to get away from her. And I did. After getting dressed and going to the baby’s nursery, I gave him his bottle, and he fell asleep while drinking it. I could’ve returned to my room, but I chose to spend the remainder of the night in the nursery, falling asleep on the rocking chair.
The next day, I had to be in the city for training and spent a little extra time in the gym practicing, too damn concerned about what would happen if I returned to Greene Gardens.
I went on a date with Vanessa that night and was distracted, just like tonight.
I had asked Vanessa out to eat every night after that night with Ivy. It was now the third night after, and I was out with Vanessa again… distracted.
“You think you’ll come back to my place tonight?” she asked, running her manicured nails through her short hair while batting her long lashes.
“Damn.” I chuckled nervously. “Can we eat first?”
She giggled. “I just thought I’d ask. While I love that we have been going out literally three nights in a row, I would love for you to hang with me at my place after.” Her hand was across the table again as she laid it against mine. “I really, really miss you, Leo.”
Her touch was missing something.
I appreciated Vanessa’s caring nature. She agreed to hang out with me at short notice and with no hesitation.
She was always like that. But there was always something about our relationship, if you could call it a relationship, that always seemed like it was missing something.
There was always something in all my relationships where I felt like I was missing something.
But that wasn’t the case the night Ivy and I hooked up.
Though the situation was so wrong, she felt so right. We felt right. I fit inside her like a puzzle piece. Where her hands laid on me just came naturally. Like they were always supposed to be there.
And that finish? I had never experienced a nut like that in my life. It ran through me like electricity, making me feel like I’d been blasted out of this planet for several seconds. It was wild.
I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I don’t know.
After everything, things were awkward, true. But in the act, while we were doing what we were doing, everything was so damn right. Perfect. Pure. Addictive? Because I’d only done it once, and it didn’t even last that long, and already I was feeling a sense of withdrawal.
“Leo,” Vanessa said across from me.
I switched my head in her direction. “What’s up?”
Her eyes moved to my right before she was pointing that way. “Our server asked what would you like to have for dinner?”
I peeked that way, noticing the woman standing there with her pencil and notepad, wearing a smile and waiting.
“Oh.” I sat up. “My bad, I didn’t even see you standing there… ummm…” I lifted my menu and went with the first thing my eyes fell on. “I’ll have the herb-crusted halibut. Thanks.”
When our server had finished taking our order, leaving Vanessa and me alone again, she wasted no time asking, “Is everything okay?”
I focused on her.
“I mean…” She held up a hand. “I know that everything isn’t okay. I just mean you seem a little out of it.”
What I wouldn’t have given to be able to talk this out with someone.
Tell her what happened with Ivy and how it had my mind so fucked up.
Because I thought Ivy was the only woman on this planet I would never sleep with.
We were so different, and I highly doubted I was her type.
But that night, in its own way, what we did was really beautiful.
She looked really fucking beautiful with me inside of her, having the most intense orgasm against me.
Time froze for me, and I wanted someone to explain to me what the hell I was feeling.
Why I wanted her again. Why I felt the need to avoid Ivy because I wanted her again in the worst way, but I knew that was a foolish thought.
Couldn’t tell Vanessa that, though. She most definitely wouldn’t be understanding about me fucking another woman, even if Vanessa and I weren’t in a relationship.
Plus, for the two years I’ve known Vanessa, she has been convinced that Ivy and I had hooked up in the past or would hook up in the future.
Vanessa swore Ivy wanted me but was hiding her desires behind our friendship, which was laughable at best. So there was no way I could tell Vanessa what had me spacing out and constantly being sucked back into my bedroom at 3 a.m., unexpectedly enjoying the best sex I’ve ever had in my entire fucking life.
“I’m good,” I told her, forcing another smile. I’d been doing that every night since I asked her out to eat. Lying. “Just… I got a lot on my mind.”
Like how tight Ivy’s pussy was around me and how I was pretty sure I would be willing to take my final breath buried inside of her, just like that night.
I cleared my throat and reached for my glass, tossing back the brandy.
I was lifting my hand to signal our server to bring another round when Vanessa reached her hand across the table again.
Her touch was so damn empty, my God.
Not like Ivy’s. Her touch—from the innocent caress of my back to the dig of her nails in my back—was otherworldly.
“Come back to my place tonight.” Vanessa licked her lips, then drew her bottom lip into her mouth to bite. “I’ll take care of you.”
So I did. I had my driver bring Vanessa and me to her apartment. She didn’t waste much time as soon as we stepped through her door. And I did my best to stay in the moment. Tried to be receptive from the ride over as she kept running her hand up and down my neck, leaning in for a kiss.
Any time before the night with Ivy, all of that would have been enough… or was it? Or was I just settling then, like I was settling now as Vanessa walked me to her couch in her living room?
Her hands were at the back of her dress as she zipped it down, the fabric coming undone around her shoulders and then her waist before it was falling to her feet.
Vanessa was a really beautiful woman. Everything about and around her was beautiful. Her apartment was that of a socialite. Furry this, gold-plated that. She was truly a great woman. Then why was what she was doing tonight not doing anything for me?
She was down on her knees, kissing me through my jeans. I dropped my head back against the neck of her couch, squeezing my eyes closed, trying like hell to ground myself in the moment.
But, fuck! Something was missing.
Vanessa unzipped my fly and pulled out my dick that was still very flaccid.
It was never, ever flaccid around her.
“Oh,” she commented, lifting her gaze to mine. “It’s okay.” She nodded next, allowing a sweet smile to pull at her lips. “I got you.”
And any other time, that would have sufficed, but tonight I just wasn’t feeling it.
“You know what?” I gently took her by her wrists and moved myself out of her reach, standing to my feet. “I’m just gonna head home.”
“What?” she asked, taking a seat on the couch, watching as I fixed myself. “Why?”
“I’m not feeling too good,” I lied. “I’m not in the right headspace, and that’s not fair to you.”
“It’s fine—”
“It’s not, Vanessa,” I spoke over her. I closed the space between us, taking a seat on the couch beside her for only a moment. I took her by the chin, caressing her there for a breath before leaning in to leave a kiss against her forehead. “I’ll call you.”
She sighed, then nodded, pressing a hand to my face. “Okay.”
Back in the black car I rented and headed down the I-87 en route to Greene Gardens, alone with my thoughts, all I could think about was Ivy and that night. That was all I could think about these last few days.
What the hell was even that?
I had never seen Ivy in that light before, completely pushed the idea of us to the back of my mind the night we first went out with our friends.
Very beautiful, she wasn’t my type personality-wise.
Uptight, way too particular, and headstrong…
with a sex face that was making me hard in the back of that black car from memory alone.
I lowered my attention to my crotch and asked, “Really? Now you wanna firm up?”
“What’s that, sir?” my driver asked from the front of the car.
I chuckled, lifting my hand and holding it within sight. “Nothing, Greg. I’m just back here trippin’ is all.”
He chuckled, removing his eyes off the rearview and focusing on the road up ahead.
Because I had to be trippin’, wanting to do any of the shit Ivy and I did that night again.
We did need to talk about it, though. Since that night, I have been busy, and so has she, barely seeing each other around the house…
Or were we avoiding each other?