Chapter 13
Andy
“So my roommate isn’t going to be home tonight…
I mean, if you don’t have plans.” The girl—Meg—has blue strands that fall around her face and I should want to brush them back, trail my lips across it and take her up on her offer.
Going through the motions has been easy—it’s muscle memory for me.
But it’s half-assed. A sad attempt at interest that Meg is not committed to noticing.
Scott slaps me on the back before I have time to answer her.
“Ay, you up for some beer pong?” Scott is clearly intoxicated as he usually is at these sorts of things.
“I'm good, man. I just played with Grant.”
He looks at me, his face morphing into something comical, his bewilderment clear.
“Grant? What the fuck? Didn’t you hear about Ben and Will?
” I roll my eyes and sigh, lifting my hand off the wall where it was resting right above Meg’s head.
I tilt my head in the opposite direction, insinuating I’ll catch up with her later, and she goes, eyes heavy with lust. I straighten, crossing my arms.
“Yes Scott. I was there.”
Scout’s mouth is set in a pout, and I know he can hear my annoyance. “We aren’t friends with Grant. Will would flip the fuck out if he—”
“Have you tried growing up, Scott?” I shake my head at him like he’s an idiot because he is, and shove my hands in my pockets, scanning the crowd.
He mutters something under his breath, but I ignore him, waiting for him to walk away as I scan the room for Meg, finding her at the bar.
But in the center of the room is a tall mess of blonde hair that wasn’t here twenty minutes ago, swaying to a song I’ve never heard.
Scott, still within two feet of me, follows my gaze.
“So you do have an ulterior motive…shouldn’t be hard. I heard she gets around,” he snickers, nudging me with his elbow and I can’t stop my scowl. I wonder if he can see the guilt binding itself around my ribs, because I do have an ulterior motive with Sloane, whether I like it or not.
“Scott. Shut the fuck up.”
I push past him and decide to walk towards Meg—the woman waiting for me, who’s a chess champion, who’s laugh is soft and forgiving, who’s uncomplicated and who’s touch doesn’t do a thing to me except what it scientifically should. No magic. Just a reaction, untethered from anything that lasts.
I pivot toward the kitchen bar, really meaning to meet her, not ready to do the fucked up thing I’m supposed to be doing to Sloane.
But somewhere along the way, I decide to wander through the crowd, not around it, because the need to get just a little closer is all consuming, even as it’s tinged with hot dread.
Keeping a few people between us as I move, I just let myself look.
Eyes closed. Long tanned limbs moving fluidly to the pop song blaring from the speakers.
Cowboy boots on her feet and an oversized, distressed t-shirt that hides the shorts that may or may not be there hung over her deceptively athletic frame.
Glitter on those eye lids. Unbothered and innocent, and it feels unfair that she’s ended up in my father’s crosshairs.
“Spellman!” Josiah throws an arm around me and I watch Sloane's eyes snap open, catching me looking. A small, mischievous grin lights up her face and I quickly turn to Josiah, trying to seem busy, trying to look like I wasn’t fixated on her.
“Yo, bro—you in love?” Josiah smiles and I wonder how long I was looking.
“Just taking in the sights.” I give him a douchey grin to cover it all up.
“Yeah, man. You and every other guy here.” He nods to the guys I clocked looking at Sloane and I feel rage heat the pit of my stomach. “Shit, looks like someone beat you to it.”
I turn and spot Ryan McMahon, one of the hockey guys, with his hands firmly planted on Sloane’s waist. The hem of her shirt dress leaving little to the imagination as she sways, her ass way too close to the guy for it to be a first encounter.
My jaw clenches and my whole body feels on fire, even though I’m the last person who gets to feel possessive over her.
“Damn Andy, don’t kill the guy. Besides, weren't you talking to that blue haired chick? Where’d she go?
” I glance over at the bar where Meg is sipping a drink and staring at her phone, oblivious.
I look back over at Sloane who seems to have forgotten my existence entirely, her attention fully on Ryan.
The sight burns, has that jealousy warming my chest, but I know it’s not really jealousy. It’s self-pity that I can’t do what I usually do, can’t just talk her up all night, and fall into her like I swear she’d want to fall into me if it weren’t for her brother.
It’s self-hatred, the kind that’s never stayed around this long.
And isn’t it the path of least resistance that solves most problems? If this is the source of my angst, then through it, not around it, is the only way to the other side. There, in a post-Sloane world, things won’t be complicated and I won’t be putting everything at risk.
“I’m not sure,” I mumble to Josiah, taking the path that brings me closest to the woman who, unintentionally, has become the most beautiful bane of my existence, only halfway committed to snuffing out this feeling between us.
Suddenly, I’m close enough that her citrus and sugar and woodsmoke lap against me, a taunt only I can feel.
“Hey, man,” Ryan chuckles, offering me a fist to bump while his other hand still clings to her waist.
Adrenaline rushes through my veins like waves pummeling the sea shore when I give him a quick hey in return, when Sloane hears me, spins in Ryan’s hold, and gazes up at me as her hips grind into him.
“Hey, you,” she shouts above the music, still moving. I grind my teeth, willing myself not to care.
“You know Grant’s sister?” Ryan says, his grin toothy and dumb while he shakes his head in disbelief.
Envy sticks to every inch of my skin and this close to her, it threatens to pull me under.
My pulse taps erratically as I shift my gaze downward, locking with those deep sea eyes.
And I can’t do it, can’t utter a single thing that would make sense because all I need to know is if she’s talked to some fucking reporter, but all I want to ask is if she’d go out with me sometime.
If she’d look past all the assumptions she, rightly, made about me and take a chance because I can’t shake her out of my damn mind.
Instead, I muster a crooked smile and brush past the two of them, like the coward I am.
“Andy,” she calls after me, her finger tips brushing my wrist and I pause in the empty space of a doorway, cracked open to let the cool October breeze filter into the foggy house. “I didn’t get to say thank you.”
The bridge of her nose, her cheekbones—they glisten with sweat. Her chest rises and falls and my heart pulses loudly in my ear drums, every other sound in the room warping until it’s really just us and the night air that softly whispers.
“It’s fine,” I manage to mutter. “I owed you.”
She narrows her eyes. “Did I do somethin’?”
I can see the way her cheeks pulls inward, get clamped between her teeth. Her usual breeziness recedes, and I can see the thin resolve in her gaze. Like me, of all people, could break the invisible dam I’m just now realizing is probably always there.
She asked if I would be fine and now I, in the midst of this damp room, need to know if she is. Her eyes silently beg me to explain my sudden indifference but I can’t without telling it all. So I just recoil at myself, internally, far beneath the surface, and keep my real questions there.
“Why would I be mad at you?” I feel my eyes crinkle at the corners when I force a subtle smile. It disarms her like I hoped it would and she sucks her teeth, purses her lips the way she does before she toys with you, and I wait for it. Hungry for it.
“Oh, I have no idea.” She pushes her hip out, letting her head fall the opposite way as she studies me, the confident steel in eyes reassembling itself. “I’ve really been sweet as pie. Offered to make you a sad boy mix CD…” She shakes her head.
“That I would have no way of playing…” I muse, dipping my head against my better judgment. A blush wisps across her cheeks.
“My car’s got a real fancy receiver. Installed it myself.”
“Look at you. Generous and handy…sweet as pie,” I joke, counting off, ignoring the easy feeling. “Heart of gold.”
“Exactly. Which is why for the life of me, I can’t figure out why you’re actin’ like you didn’t try to jump my bones the moment you met me.” The dimples in both cheeks deepen, her blush turning rosy, like the mention of that night embarrasses her too.
I bite back a smile. A real one. “Is that what you want, Sloane? For me to make a fool of myself for you?” Because I would.
She rolls those lips together, the corners tugging upward. “Maybe I do.”
Her gaze dips to my lips as hers part, and the pull is heavy.
It’s a hot, suffocating press; it’s gravity, the laws of physics, and ignoring it feels wrong in a way nothing ever has.
It’s bone deep and painful…that ache again, but worse.
When she lifts her gaze to mine, she doesn’t know she’s twisting the knife intended for her, deep between my ribs.
I’d rather it this way—where she never knows who I am and it’s just me bleeding out the lie in silence.
A wide backed man—football, most likely—wedges himself between us because we’re blocking the door to the patio, and the spell shatters. Sloane looks away, clearing her throat as his jersey chafes against her shirt when he passes.
“I found the roof,” she finally says, looking up at me with all this good will and friendship, and I want to tell her to give it to someone else but, selfishly, I want it.
“Should we?” she asks, brows raised as she tips her head toward the staircase.
She looks like she’s invested in my answer.
The no is right there, on the tip of my tongue, but doesn’t make it out.