Chapter 12 #2
She was going to have some other man because...because he’d never offered himself.
That’s egotistical shit.
Yeah. It was egotistical shit. But he was an egotist. He was a man, and that meant that he had a pretty healthy one.
So that was that.
They earned a few glances, because normally, the two of them wouldn’t even do this in a casual sort of way. Everyone was used to seeing them fight, a dance?
That was uncharted territory.
He took her hand, and twirled her around, and that necessitated him pulling her back up against his body afterward, which felt like a big miscalculation. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, and he got a good whiff of her skin.
She didn’t wear any scents. It was just the cleanest sort of soap and her.
And the hunger that created inside of him was something he’d never felt before.
She was everything he’d ever known her to be right then. The stubborn kid that had raced after them, did her best to keep up.
The angry teenager who had started taking that anger out on him whenever her mood suited.
And the woman he had gotten to know since then. The one that she had grown into, the one who had taken all those qualities, and fashioned something brilliant out of them.
A stubbornness that got things done, an aggression that meant she was never down for too long.
Altogether, Lila. As she was now.
This woman that he couldn’t reduce to being defined by her relationships, that he couldn’t turn into just his best friend’s younger sister.
His hand was on her lower back, his other gripping hers, and he thought they both might be breathing a little heavy for the exertion they were actually putting out.
The tempo of the song changed, and then transitioned into a ballad, which meant everyone slowed down, and the steps became smoother, his hold more intimate, even though he hadn’t meant it to be. It was just what the music dictated, he couldn’t really help it.
He saw something spark in her eyes, and then that spark turned to something more like fury. She took a step away from him. “I just need some air.”
Then she turned away, leaving him standing on the dance floor by himself.
Another woman, one he vaguely knew, stepped in from the side, where she had been watching the dancing. “You seem to be without a partner. Mind if I cut in?”
“Go ahead,” he said, taking hold of her hand, wrapping his arm around her waist, and finding that he didn’t like the way she felt there like that.
This was infuriating. Lila had felt soft, right, like a promise. A beautifully wrapped package that he could enjoy just as she was. As the promise of something, but also a beautifully wrapped package that he had longed to tear open.
This felt like nothing. Just another person. His hand on her hip, his hand in her hand. It wasn’t really anything, and it certainly wasn’t anything enough to blot out what he had felt holding Lila.
He looked up, and saw Lila staring at him from the door that she had partially opened, and then she turned around and went outside.
“Excuse me,” Nolan said, leaving his new partner on the dance floor without even a second thought.
He didn’t pause to look for Cody or Walker, just went straight out the back.
“What are you doing?” she asked when the door closed behind him.
“What do you mean?”
The back of the barn had a little seating area, it was paved, with a garden wall that had vines draped over the back.
It wasn’t lit, not by anything other than the pale light of the full moon. The smattering of stars above them.
Like shattered glass on deep black velvet.
It was quiet out here. Empty.
Dangerous.
“Why ask me to dance and then let some other woman cut in?”
“I didn’t ask her to dance. And you left.”
“Those are two separate questions,” Lila said. “So let’s actually start with the first one, why would you ask me to dance?”
“Because you were a woman sitting there without a partner, and I thought you needed one.”
“Since when have you looked at me and seen a woman?”
He let out a slow breath, lowered his head, walked a few paces, and then around to the side of Lila, like if he could get a look at her from a different angle, it might be easier to answer.
“You are one,” he said.
“Wow. You should go into detective work. The observational skills required for you to observe that are really something.”
“I don’t think you want to get into this discussion.”
“No. Let’s do it. Let’s have the discussion, because everything has been weird between us. It has been... So weird. I think I’d rather fight with you than deal with all this.”
He moved in, so quickly, he even surprised himself, and he reached out and put his hand on her cheek. Big mistake. It was soft. So soft, and all he wanted to do was drag his thumb across her lower lip and see if it was as soft and inviting as it looked.
“You’re attracted to me,” he said.
“What?” She practically hissed the reply.
“That’s why you got so angry when I tried to put the Band-Aid on your forehead.” He let his hand drift up, moved his thumb over the remaining scratch right there on her head. “It took me a little bit to figure it out, but then I did.”
“I’m attracted to Jason,” she said. “I’m going to fuck him.”
“Doesn’t mean you aren’t attracted to me.”
“Well, what the fuck does that matter?”
“I don’t know, Lila. And a few days ago, I would have said that it didn’t. A few weeks ago, I would have... Hell, I don’t know. But now I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, and what has been seen cannot be unseen.”
“Is that how basic you are? A woman wants you and suddenly... What? You can perceive that she’s a potential sex object for you? No. Thank you, Nolan. Really, heavy no thank you.”
She started to walk away from him, and he grabbed her arm. “That isn’t what I said.”
“Maybe it isn’t what you said, but can you explain to me how it’s not what you actually mean?”
“I have tried,” he said. “I have tried to keep my feelings in order. I haven’t let myself look at you that way. Because I didn’t think it was something that you–”
“What? You’re going to pretend that you didn’t look at me and see a kid because you were trying to protect me?”
“No. I’m not. I swear to God I’m not. It’s just... I don’t know how to explain it. But somewhere in all this, things got really fucked.”
“Then let’s make them less fucked. Let’s just... walk away from this. Because I have a date. I have a date, Nolan, I’m going to deal with this, finally. And it has nothing to do with you.”
“But you don’t even like him.”
“I like him just fine.”
“Do you? A hell of a lot more than I like you. You know me,” he said, something desperate building inside of him. “You know me, and that matters.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lila said. “It doesn’t matter. People can know you and abandon you, know you and screw you over, know you and then one day turn around and never think of you again, and we both know that. So no, it doesn’t mean anything that I know you.”
“Have you been kissed, Lila?”
The question was strained, forced through his tight throat. She froze, all lit up in the pale moonlight, and there it was, a makeover for the ages. Lila, bathed only in the moonlight. Hell, he wanted to see her just like that, naked, beneath the stars, nothing else.
He wanted it so badly that he couldn’t breathe, wanted it so badly that he felt like he was frozen with that need.
“Why?”
“I need to know. You go off, and you fuck that dumb boy, okay? If that’s what you need to do to feel good, you do that. But I just want to know if you’ve ever been kissed before.”
She shook her head.