Chapter 19 #2
“Because I was completely gone for you, but I’d spent years reading about how I wasn’t pretty enough or talented enough.
About how people bet my parents wished they had a daughter more like them.
That shit fucks you up. And I guess I couldn’t bear the thought that you’d say the same thing.
Because that girl who kissed you was so pretty, Sebastian.
She had these long legs, curves in all the right places, and she was the kind of girl everyone always thought I should have been. ”
Even at twenty-eight, the sting of those unmet expectations still hits like the crack of a whip across my scar tissue-riddled heart.
“Oh, Indie.” Sebastian sets his mug down on one of the bedside tables before taking mine from my hand and repeating the process. Then he scoots toward me, grabs me by the hips, and settles me on his lap.
One moment I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed, the next I’m straddling the man who was my best friend, then my greatest regret. How did I get here?
“How many times did I tell you that every single person who wrote dumb shit like that about you deserved to be thrown into the sea? That you were talented and smart and pretty?” He brushes my hair over my shoulder, then lets his fingers skim my collar bones and arms.
“You had to say that. You were my best friend.”
He huffs out a laugh, and I try not to notice the way each corresponding bounce of his body grinds my center against his lap. And his hardening dick. “Sweetheart, I wanted to be so much more than that.”
I want to laugh and cry. I want to bitch slap eighteen-year-old Indie into oblivion.
But I also want to beat the shit out of every single paparazzo and so-called reporter who wrote horrifyingly cruel things about a teenage girl who was simply trying to exist in a world that put too much emphasis on impossible beauty standards. “I didn’t know.”
He shakes his head. “I thought I was so obvious. Seriously, Indie, how did you not know? My mom used to tell me I looked at you with hearts in my eyes, and even a blind person could see that I wanted you.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Okay, Rosebud. You didn’t know. But now you do. So the question is, where do we go from here?” His hands skim down my soft sides, making me stiffen, before settling on my hips. “God, you’re beautiful.”
I have no idea how to respond to that, so I don’t. I just stare at him, unable to look away, but terrified I’ll catch an expression that tells me he’s lying.
I don’t.
“Seriously, Indie. I’ve never met a more beautiful, captivating woman.
When I saw you in the stands that game, I thought I was hallucinating.
But then I realized the pink was a hair color I’d never seen you photographed with, so I couldn’t be.
” His fingers move back to my arms, tracing the black and gray flowers tattooed there that make up my sleeves.
“And I don’t think you had full sleeves in the last photo I saw of you. ”
The warm drag of his fingers along my skin makes me shiver. I never want him to stop touching me. “Were you stalking me, crab boy?”
“Please don’t start calling me that,” he says, chuckling. “But yeah. Tried, at least. You keep a pretty low profile.”
“You don’t.”
He nods. “Wanted it to be easy for you to find me.”
My poor heart stutters before picking up speed. “And that’s why you never changed your phone number.”
“I spent the first few years hoping you’d call,” he says as he traces the line work of an unfurling peony. “By the fifth year, I figured you’d probably deleted it, but I still couldn’t bring myself to change it.”
“I never deleted it,” I whisper. “Sometimes I’d sit in bed and stare at it. Daring myself to hit the call button. But I was too much of a coward.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. So sorry you saw that. God, if I could go back in time…”
“Me too,” I say, regret making each word so heavy, I can barely push them out of my throat. “If I’d just given you a heads-up that we got in early, none of this would have happened. If I’d watched a little longer or answered when you called…”
“We could drown in what-ifs.” He cups the side of my neck and pulls my face closer to his. “But we can’t change the past. Now that we know, we can change the future, though. If you want.”
I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life.
“I want,” I whisper against his plush lips.
God, his smile is blinding, this close up. “Good. Me too.”
The way he kisses me is a whole-body experience.
His hand on the side of my neck, guiding me where he wants me.
The roll of his hips beneath me, creating instant sparks from the friction of his jeans against my thin sleep shorts.
His broad chest radiates heat I want more of.
Pressing closer, I swallow his groan of approval.
“You taste so good,” he murmurs between swipes of his tongue. His lips never leave mine. “I’ve spent almost half my life waiting for this moment.”
When his hips move again, I gasp against his lips. Pleasure, deep and insistent, builds inside of me. “Bash.”
“I know, baby. You can let go. I’ve got you.”
He always did.
Grinding against him, I push my fingers through his hair, needing something to hold on to as I kiss him with a feverish need. A need more than ten years in the making. A need that absolutely will not be denied any longer.
“You’re doing so well,” he murmurs, using his grip on my hips to push me down the length of his erection. “That’s it.”
My breath is coming in short, sharp bursts as I lose myself to the sensations of him. His lips, his hardness, his heat.
“Oh my god.” I gasp when he pulls me hard against his dick. It’s almost too much. The feel of him straining against the rough denim and the zipper of his fly with nothing but a pair of panties and the thin cotton of my sleep shorts to blunt things.
“That’s my girl. I’ve been waiting ten years to see what you look like when you come. Don’t make me wait any longer.”
And with that, I shatter. My muscles seize, my stomach hollows out, and I press my face into Bash’s neck to muffle my strangled scream.
Bash’s hands don’t stop moving me over his hard length, prolonging my pleasure. And when his muscles bunch and his movements grow erratic before he goes still and shudders beneath me, I nearly come again.
Because I’m pretty sure I just made Sebastian Navarro come in his pants like a teenager. Just ten years late.