Chapter 10 #3
“Don’t get me wrong,” I continue, “I really enjoy the jazz I get to do at the theater, but ballet’s always been my favorite.
” The precision. The control. The way every movement is articulated down to the toes.
“Plus, dance in general isn’t exactly a safe career choice.
I wouldn’t be double majoring in communications if it was. ”
“Fair enough.” He dips his chin. “I’ll take Truth.”
“Have you ever been in love?” Curiosity over his romantic past has been gnawing at me since the first time we kissed. The topic of other partners—past or present—just never comes up, and I’d rather suffer in uncertainty than look clingy and ask directly. This is the perfect cover.
“I thought I was once. For a while, actually.” His gaze lifts, finding mine. “But now, I’m not so sure.”
I swallow. “Dare.”
Charlie tips his head, studying me as his eyes narrow in thought. “I dare you to tell me about the most embarrassed you’ve ever been.”
“Easy,” I say flatly. “That’d be in high school, when I let a boy take naked photos of me and he leaked them to all his friends almost immediately. By the next day, everyone at school knew what great tits I had.”
His brow furrows so deep, I wonder if it’s making his head ache. “That’s fucking awful. I’m sorry, Win.”
I cock my head. “You’re not going to ask why I did it? Let him take the photos in the first place?”
“No? I’m not sure that’s any of my business. And regardless of why you did it, it doesn’t make what that kid did any less shitty.” His voice smooths out. “But if you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”
Running my nail along the jagged edge of a cuticle, I look down at my lap. It goes against all my usual instincts, but I do want to tell him. Like my ugly secrets are a litmus test for how much he’ll put up with and still want to keep me around.
“I had a crush,” I say. “And I was stupid. And I thought he meant it when he said he liked me. It’s fucked, I know, but I thought doing that might make him stay.”
“You weren’t stupid,” he says softly. The corner of his mouth twitches. “And if it makes you feel any better, I think you dodged a bullet when he didn’t. I’d bet a lot of money that a guy like that can’t even make a girl come.”
“Charlie!” I squeal, clapping a hand over my mouth. I double over, howling with laughter, forehead against his hip. He laughs too and his hand brushes my thigh. Even as I sit up, catching my breath, he leaves it there, thumb wearing a tiny path across my skin.
“I’ll take Truth,” he says around his shit-eating grin.
I bite my bottom lip and tilt my head, matching his smile. “Have you ever thought about me while you jerked off?”
His eyebrows fly up and a delicious color blooms all the way up to his ears; I’ve caught him deeply off guard.
Gaping at me, he levels me with a dubious glare and I suck back a giggle.
But his gaze darkens as he tips the champagne to his lips.
Eyes on me, he drinks. Molten heat pools low in my belly, sinking further south as my pulse skyrockets.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll take another truth.”
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?” I breathe, my lips parting.
He scrapes a hand over his jaw. “Herculean self-control.”
“No, but . . . why?”
“You really want the truth?”
I stare at him, because we both know I already know.
“I want a lot more from you than just a hookup, Win.”
My stomach tightens. “C’mon, Charlie. This is fun. It’s working.”
“Until it’s not,” he mutters. “Someone always ends up hurt.”
A stuttered beat echoes behind my sternum. “You think you’d hurt me?”
His thumb stops tracing my skin. “No, Winnie. I think you’d hurt me.”
I push the sleeves of his button-up to my elbows, suddenly hot. “The real thing never ends well.”
My parents had “the real thing” once upon a time, from what I’ve been told. That didn’t stop my dad from sleeping with a teller at his bank; it didn’t stop my mom from revenge screwing my eighth grade math teacher, either.
“That’s not true,” he challenges.
Maybe not for people like him—people who come from beautiful, successful, well-adjusted families who fly across state lines for ski trips.
But for me? For the trash from middle-of-nowhere Kansas whose nudes are saved on the phone of every jock from high school, and whose screwed-up family couldn’t even make it through Christmas dinner without cracking right down the middle?
“You want too much, Charlie,” I whisper, tucking my shaking hands beneath my legs.
“No. I want you to want me more than you’re scared of whatever this is between us.” He leans forward, pushing a stray hair out of my face, and our eyes lock.
There’s pure, unrestrained desire flaring back at me.
Electricity prickles up my spine as he grabs my wrist, thumb covering my pulse point.
Can he feel how wild I am for him? Is he counting each tortured beat?
Time thickens, slow and syrupy and sweet, as he brings my hand to his parted lips.
I exhale a whimper as he leans into my palm and his warm mouth meets my skin, right at the heel of my hand.
My whole body pulses as he draws in a long breath and kisses me.
“God, Winnie.” Another kiss. “You try so hard to come off like you don’t give a shit, but I see past it all. I think you do want more. You’re just scared to let yourself have it.”
I blink away the stinging threat of tears. “How do you do that? See right through me?”
In answer, he plants another kiss on my palm wordlessly. I stretch my thumb to caress his cheek.
“No one’s ever wanted me like this,” I murmur around the swelling lump in my throat.
Not my parents. Not my big brother. Not Sam Wheeler or the boy on the football team who passed around my photos. Not Denny or Bryce or Michael or the other jerks who thought I only existed when their tongue was down my throat.
It’s proof miracles exist when he understands me—truly understands what I said.
When he stills his kisses and looks up at me and whispers back to the quivering artery in my wrist with so much tender, earnest acknowledgment, “I’m sorry.
” As if he heard the twang of painful truth in my voice, knew I meant more than this explosive chemistry between us.
He tugs me closer, his other hand moving to my hip as I straddle his lap. Delicately, I slide his glasses off, fold them, and set them on my end table.
“I want you so much it makes me think I’m losing my mind sometimes,” he murmurs. “I can’t imagine how anyone can look at you and not see something incredible. But, Win, I—I can’t do casual. Not with you.”
How strange it is to feel so special to someone. I don’t know how I did it, how I tricked this boy with cracked ice eyes to see so much good in me—more than I see in myself. But the way he looks at me, the way he touches me, the way he treats me . . . it makes me want to see it too.
When I packed my suitcase on my bedroom floor before I left for college, I told myself I would never let a boy hurt me again. But for once, the sixth sense sparking in my gut isn’t a message to run.
It’s telling me to stay.
I left Kansas for the last time the day after Christmas, and it hits me now, clear as day: I don’t ever want to go back. I want to leave every ugly piece of me back home, and be the girl he sees in me instead. I want to trust him.
His anxious eyes are searching mine for an answer, and maybe a better girl would put him out of his misery quickly. But Charlie likes me. And I like to play.
I delve my fingers into his hair and kiss him.
He groans, hands tightening on my hips, and parts for me immediately.
His tongue caresses mine and a small, desperate sound pops in my throat.
Jerking me closer, his fingers curl even deeper into my flesh, and I pray his touch leaves a mark.
An artifact to prove I meant something to someone once—meant something to him.
His kisses trail my jaw, then lower, his warm, wet mouth worshiping my throat.
Closing around a spot that makes my toes curl, he sucks on my sensitive skin, sinking his teeth in enough to make me gasp before soothing it with the glide of his tongue.
And it feels so fucking good, not just because of the sensation, but because he does it all with so much pure, aching want.
Like he’d take his last, dying breath if he didn’t get to put his mouth on me again and again.
Like he’d cease to exist if it weren’t for the choked moans I catch in the back of my throat as he tugs at my collar with his teeth.
His voice is gruff as he asks, “Is this going to be the last time?”
“That depends, Flower Boy.” I drag my hand down to his bare chest, flatten it over his pounding heart. “Are you going to be my boyfriend or not?”
It takes eons for him to process. It’s a beautiful sight, watching it bloom on his face.
His grin is infectious; I feel it down to my toes. Warm and sturdy, his arms wind around my waist. “You have this nasty habit of stealing all my best moves right out from under me.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrug. “I think you’re kind of into it.”
“So very disgustingly into it.”
He moves to kiss me, but I stop him. “Promise we won’t hurt each other?”
“It’s a deal.”
When we seal it with a kiss, I really believe I will keep my end of the bargain.