It hurts, like someone sticking a thousand needles into my skin, to admit that. To be vulnerable. But it also feels cathartic, like the weight that’s always bruising my heart has been temporarily lifted.
“Bevan …” He breathes, almost in a whisper.
In the frying pan, my chicken begins to smoke, and when I go to flip it over with the tongs, it flops right out onto the floor. My dinner, the one I’d diligently tried to prepare, is now a victim of our kitchen floor, which hasn’t been mopped in who knows how long.
“Oh, shit! Damn it!” I bend, my arm brushing Callum’s as he dives for the floor two.
And then we’re face-to-face, alone in the house.
15
CALLUM
We’re crouched on the floor, sopping up the mess of her still steaming hot chicken, and Bevan snorts.
“God, I really am so clumsy.”
It breaks the tension of the moment we were just about to have. Honestly, we have almost had several moments in this fifteen-minute interaction, and if that doesn’t tell you how sexually magnetic we are, I’m not sure what will.
My mind is still racing over what she just admitted, because it’s the most the woman has ever opened up to me, and I dated her for six years. I know that her father left, though the details around it are murky. Bevan has barely opened up to me about it, and I know Taya and Amelie are in the dark as well, because I’ve tried to pry them for information. I know her parents were never married, and I know it fucked her mom up.
But aside from a few offhand comments or insults hurled during our worst fights, I know nothing. Until now. She just admitted that she’s afraid of people leaving her, that she pushed me away to see how far I would go. And eventually, I did leave. Sadness and guilt suffuse inside me, because I made her worst fear come true.
I have to brush it aside, though, because dammit, I almost just kissed her before she dropped her dinner all over the gross kitchen floor.
“The clumsiest.” I chuckle, because she is. “Remember the time you accidentally tripped and ran into that table at the bake sale sophomore year?”
“I thought Ernie Demesto’s mom was going to strangle me!” She laughs. “That sucked.”
“But I got a free chocolate chip cookie out of it, even if I had to eat it off the floor.”
Bevan’s eyes come up at the exact same time mine are going down, and our gazes collide. It’s at this moment that I realize that I’m in shark-infested water, and I’m the shark. Because, God, my blood is singeing my veins. One look at her this close and I want to abandon all the guns I’ve stuck to for so long.
Unfortunately, I don’t even get a chance to stick to them, because Bevan decides for us. She leans forward, grasping my face, and then her mouth is on mine. Love and lust burst between us like an engulfing blaze, all the pent-up emotions I’ve kept hidden since we broke up freeing to blow past the surface. I’ve dreamed about this for a year and a half, about touching her skin and tasting her tongue. She’s the only girl I’ve ever been with, and I’ve kept it that way because there is nothing like this. This feeling between us could never be duplicated, this all-consuming madness that only ends when we’re sweaty and sated in each other’s arms.
And because I can’t help myself, I’m kissing her back. With fervor, taking the kiss from a gentle test that she started with and transforming it to a desperate, steamy make out session.
I’m moving like a python, holding her back as I lower her to the floor and come over her to cover her body. She parts her legs for me and I sink right between her thighs. The whole time, our mouths never part. We’re sucking and biting at each other, my groin grinding hard into what I know are her soaked panties underneath the workout pants she has on. If I stop this kiss and move to that spot on her collarbone, then the one on her hip that drives her fucking wild and has her hips bucking, I know we won’t stop.
I don’t want to stop. Not with Bevan mewling into my mouth and scratching at my back like a rabid animal. Makeup sex was always our vaccine, the thing that kept us from dying … at least for a little while longer. Her long fingernails, a shade of plum this week, work my shirt up and over my head. It’s only when the fabric is about to pass my ears that I’m jerked back into this world, this reality.
The one where I know nothing good can come of this, and we’ll only end up breaking each other’s hearts all over again.
I break off, pulling myself off her, disgusted in myself and mad that I let her get to me like that. I’ve been so good, for a year and a half I’ve kept my dick in my pants when it comes to her. There were so many times I almost gave in, went back to my ex because I knew how it would be between us. Our sex life had always been explosive, even if we were each other’s firsts.
“Have you kissed other girls? Since we’ve been apart?” Bevan touches her swollen lips, and fuck, that makes me want to bite them again.
That pisses me off even more and I slam my hand into the counter as I rise from the floor and pace away from her.
“I’ve been with no one else. Is that what you fucking want to hear? I haven’t been able to touch another girl because the only one I ever wanted to put my hands on is you. For the rest of my life, I only planned on it being you. It makes me nauseous to think about feeling anything for or with another girl, but I have to, right? Because we don’t fucking work. We’re a head-on car crash, two trains destined to smash into each other every time. We’ll destroy each other before we ever find happiness. And yes, you can get help and explore your issues, but you’ll never fully reveal them to me. I know you, Bevan. You’re manipulative and you know how to push every one of my buttons. If I was naive, I’d think that little ‘I dropped my dinner’ move was intentional. But it wasn’t, was it? Fuck, living here was the worst decision.”
I can’t trust myself around her. This girl is tattooed on me, a permanent mark I’ll never wipe clean. I know all her moves, all the shit she’s pulled in the past. We’ve done it to each other, and I’m not diving back into that death trap again.
“You’re really calling me a liar? Someone weak enough to stage that bullshit just to … what? Kiss you? I’ve been there, done that, Callum. Have you ever thought about how hard it is for me that you moved back in? You’re the one who broke up with me, who gave up on us. Having to see you every day, having to watch you go out on dates and bring other girls home? It’s fucking torture! Is it any wonder I cry in my room every other night. Forgive me for wanting you back. For loving you for eternity because that’s always how it will be. I can’t turn it off, no matter how much you don’t want to be with me. I get it, you hate me, you can’t stand the thought of—“”
“I DON’T HATE YOU!” I explode, stomping across the room until I’m two millimeters from her face. “I fucking love you. I am so fucking in love with you that I can’t see straight most days, and that makes me hate myself. Even after almost two years of trying to stay the hell away from you, one look in your direction and I’m a goner. And that’s what I hate. I hate that I love you even if I don’t want to.”