Bad idea. Because even through the towel, I could feel her hard nipples against me. I had to angle my lower half away from her so she wouldn’t be able to feel that I was hard. Christ.
She shivered. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were getting back at me for being mad at you.”
“Passive-aggressive isn’t my style,” I said absentmindedly. It was a miracle I was able to form any coherent thought with her wet body pressed up against me. But my words were true—I was more likely to get up in someone’s face and tell him to fuck off like I’d done with Stossel.
“Well, I guess we know the new showerhead works.”
I let go of her just enough so that I could look at her face. She grinned, and her eyes twinkled. Thank God. It had been an accident, but I still felt bad about it. And now that I knew she wasn’t upset, I could admit it was funny. Maybe not as funny as the clown incident, but again, we didn’t talk about that.
I lifted her out of the tub. It had seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do, but I sure as hell didn’t feel like a gentleman. Not when I wanted to peel the layers of wet clothing off her body and dry her skin inch by blessed inch.
Becca clung to me, still shivering. Using my thumb, I smoothed a wet tendril of hair away from her face. Her gaze met mine. Her beautiful brown eyes were open wide, but I couldn’t read them—I had no idea what she was thinking.
But I knew what I was thinking, and it wasn’t right. I was thinking that I wished to God she were someone else, not Roman’s sister, but just a perfect girl I’d met. Because I wanted nothing more than to put my mouth on hers, to strip off her wet clothing and warm her body with mine.
I wanted her, more than I’d ever wanted anyone. I’d never admitted it, even to myself, but I couldn’t deny it any longer.
Abruptly, I released her before I did something she would hate me for. “I’ve got to go.” I left the small room, afraid to meet her gaze, afraid she would be able to read me like a book. But mostly, I was afraid of her reaction if she figured out the truth—that I loved her and not like a sister.
CHAPTER 10
Becca
LUCY FLEW AROUND her room like a lunatic, tossing clothing into her suitcase. “Hamilton!” she squealed for the eighth time.
“But you’ve already seen it twice.”
Her body immediately went rigid, and she slowly spun to face me. “Excuse me?” She looked affronted by my comment, like I hadn’t simply stated a fact.
“You’ve seen it twice, right?” I was pretty sure she had because I remembered hearing her squeal “Hamilton” in that exact cadence before.
She lifted her nose in the air. “When one gets offered a free Hamilton ticket, one takes it.”
“I stand corrected,” I said. Except I didn’t get it. I would like to see Hamilton as much as the next person—well, I guess not as much as Lucy—but I wasn’t about to drive nine hours and miss several days of classes to do it.
“Peter’s boyfriend’s flu is my gain,” Lucy said. Peter was her cousin who lived in New York. He was a budding actor, which meant he shared an apartment with three other people and waited tables to pay the rent. It sounded miserable, but then again, I’d never had the desire to be famous, not even when I was a kid.
Lucy had only gotten the call from Peter thirty minutes ago as she was getting ready for her Othello rehearsal. She planned to go to that then start her trip immediately after, which meant she would be driving overnight. When I’d voiced my concern about her falling asleep at the wheel, she’d waved me off, saying nighttime was the best time to travel, especially to the city, because there would be less traffic.
“Text me when you get there,” I told her, setting myself up for a snarky okay, Mom retort. She was too giddy to realize she’d missed the opportunity.
“I will.” Her smile glowed. “If I get there early enough, I might try to snag some cheap tickets for a matinee show.”
“Lucy, you’ve got to sleep at some point.” Man, I wanted to okay, Mom myself. Jeez. I wasn’t usually such a mother hen.
She dismissed my concern with a shake of her head. “I’ll sleep when I’m back home. I like taking advantage of every minute I’m in the city.” She slammed her suitcase closed and zipped it. Then she grabbed it with one hand and threw her other arm around me for a split-second hug before racing out the door.
Stretching, I looked around the empty apartment, not quite sure what to do with myself. I was one hundred percent caught up on my schoolwork. Actually, one hundred and ten percent because I had already started the reading for next week. I needed to proof an assignment for Carson, but he hadn’t sent it yet. I hoped he would soon because I was exhausted.
I had done my recorded interview for homecoming court earlier that day. Lucy had applied my makeup and styled my hair to make sure I would look amazing on camera. And I had looked amazing, just not like myself. The thick layers of makeup she’d applied felt like a mask I was hiding behind, and since the interview was sandwiched between two of my classes, I’d spent the whole day feeling like a stranger to myself. I was more than ready to scrub the makeup off my face and wash the product out of my hair.
In the bathroom, I turned on the shower, and my gaze got stuck on the showerhead. What an awkward situation that had turned into. When Carson had wrapped the towel around me and pulled me against him, I’d practically moaned when my wet boobs had pressed up against his warm chest. Heck, with the way he’d run away afterward, maybe a moan had slipped out.
I stripped out of the dress I’d worn for the interview and tried pulling a comb through my hair. It got stuck halfway down. Sigh. This is not going to be fun. I carefully disentangled the comb and took it into the shower with me.
The water was starting to run cold by the time I was ready to get out of the shower. I wrapped a towel around my head, slipped into my thick terry cloth bathrobe, then shoved my feet into obnoxiously large slippers that made it look like I was wearing stuffed animals on my feet. Perhaps by the age of twenty, I should have given up my love of huge character slippers, but nope. I asked for a new pair every Christmas, and my mom always delivered.
In my bedroom, I flopped onto my bed then reached for my phone and noise-canceling headphones. Wanting to drown the world out for a little while, I selected a meditative music playlist on Spotify and closed my eyes.
***
THE SILENCE IN my headphones woke me. Groggily, I pulled my earphones off my head and inspected them. Damn. The stupid things barely held a charge anymore. I should have taken the time to find the cord instead of using the Bluetooth feature. Oh, well. I’d been dozing for nearly an hour, and if I slept any longer, I was in danger of being up all night.
Pulling the towel off my head, I padded into my bathroom to comb out my hair. As soon as I caught sight of how tangled it was, I was angry at myself for being too lazy to deal with it before I’d lain down. I tugged at the knots with a comb, cringing when huge tufts of hair stuck in the teeth. Next time Lucy wanted to put so much gunk in my hair, I was putting my foot down. I cleaned the hair out of the comb and smiled at it. If I was feeling mischievous, I would save it and play a prank on Carson later. I’d had no idea wet hair grossed him out so much. Granted, pulling wet clumps of hair out of the drain wasn’t my favorite thing to do, but it wasn’t that big of a deal.