I was either falling for her or she was giving me a heart attack.
Eventually I realized I was standing on stage gaping like a dead fish, so I hurried off. Everyone backstage was either smirking at me or staring at me like they were contemplating calling campus security.
I could just imagine how that call would go. “Um, yes, I’d like to report a possible case of incest. Please send every available officer to help clean up this train wreck.”
Unable to get the fuck out of here fast enough, I flew around the curtain to try to hunt down Sophia. But instead, I practically ran into Carter…and Joey.
“Bro! What. The. Fuck? Why did Sophia do that?” Carter asked.
“I honestly have no idea,” I replied distractedly as I tried to peer around him to find Sophia.
“She sounded jealous to me,” Joey said, snark evident in his voice.
I fixed a hard gaze on him. “Really? She said, like, three words. You were able to pull jealousy from that? Get real.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “And you sound defensive. There’s no need to get snippy.”
I gave Carter a look that I hoped said, “Get this kid the fuck away from me,” and it must’ve been relatively on point.
Carter gripped Joey’s arm. “Come on, man. I’ll buy you a drink and be your wingman for the night.”
Joey seemed happy with this development, because he let Carter tug him away without any protest.
I scanned the room for Sophia again, and I was just about to brave the crowd to look for her when Emma hurried over to me.
“She’s waiting for you up in my room,” she said. “Take the back stairs through the kitchen so no one sees you going up. I’m the third door from the left.”
I nodded at her before walking, as casually as I could muster, through the kitchen and into a small foyer that had stairs off to one side. When I got to the door Emma had directed me to, I tapped on it lightly. When I heard the door unlock, I turned the knob and went inside, relocking it behind me.
Sophia was standing in the middle of the room, two twin beds on either side of her. She was backlit by a small lamp, which was providing the only light in the room. She looked almost angelic, and it was all I could do to not kiss her. But the worried look on her face told me it wasn’t the time for that.
“Taking men into other people’s rooms now? Will you never learn?”
She stared at me blankly for a second, causing me to belatedly think it was maybe not the time for jokes. But then her shoulders dropped, and she gusted out a laugh. “Evidently not.”
I’m not sure which of us moved first, but a millisecond later we were wrapped around each other. “You okay?” I whispered against her hair.
“Probably not,” she murmured. “I think I just committed social suicide.”
“It was probably a homicide slash suicide, since I’m pretty sure I was also a casualty.”
She groaned loudly and burrowed into me.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m just teasing. It’ll be fine.”
“It really won’t.” Her words were muffled against my chest, but I could hear the genuine fear behind them.
Unsure of what to say to make things better, I continued to hold her and hope that was enough. We swayed gently together, the movement calming and almost meditative. After a few minutes, she pulled back enough that I could see her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“Continually messing everything up.”
“You haven’t messed anything up.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I know.”
She smacked me, but it also got a smile out of her, so I considered it a win.
“Not that I’m not thrilled to have to be at your beck and call for a day, but why did you do it?” I didn’t want to seem accusatory, but I was curious as hell. We’d had a plan. Not a great plan, but a plan all the same. And then she’d gone rogue, and I was dying to know why.
“I’m stupid,” she replied.
I hesitated. “I feel like there’s no good way for me to respond to that.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled again before rubbing a hand over her face. “Joey wanted to win you.”
“Well, yes, that would be a reason to bid.”
“So did all those other girls.”
“You did know what an auction was before you held one, right?”
She sighed loudly. “Can you shut up for a second? Jesus, I’m about to march you downstairs and sell you myself.”
“I don’t think Jesus is available for that.” The menacing look she gave me had me quickly saying, “Sorry,” and I mimed closing a zipper over my lips.
Her hand flailed around a little as if she were searching the air around her for the words she wanted to say. “I don’t want someone else thinking they can have you.”
When she looked at me, I nodded since I’d promised to be quiet.
“They can’t,” she continued. When I again didn’t say anything, she stepped closer. “No one else is allowed to have you because you’re already mine.”
I slid my arms around her waist and pulled her close.
“I’ve never been good at sharing,” she said quietly as she looked up at me, her face full of vulnerability.
“No matter who the highest bidder was, I still would’ve been yours.” Maybe those words weren’t the most reassuring that she’d done the right thing, but I needed her to know. Despite the crazy situation we found ourselves in, I wouldn’t have traded a second of it, because it gave me her. And I wasn’t going to lose that for some scantily clad coed who thought it was a turn-on to buy someone like a prized steed at a county fair.
“I know. But I needed them to know it too. Even though it complicates everything even more. I needed them to know, even if we’ll have to figure out a way to spin it. At least for a minute, we weren’t hiding.”
I pulled her closer to me so I could rest my cheek against her forehead. “We won’t have to hide it forever. This is a temporary situation.”
“Are we?” she asked, her voice the smallest I’d ever heard it.
“Are we what?”
“Temporary.”
I looked down at her so she could see the honesty in my response. “Fuck no.” And then I kissed her like I never had before. I owned her mouth, demonstrating every ounce of possessiveness I could.
She met every bit of that kiss with an urgency of her own. There was no denying what this was: a claiming—just like what she’d done downstairs. We’d have to spin what happened at the auction somehow, but for a short time, we thrust our feelings into the spotlight.
And even though we’d have to lie about it afterward, I couldn’t deny that I’d needed the proverbial moment in the sun. It was easy to tell someone what they wanted to hear behind closed doors. But declaring it in front of over a hundred people? No one had ever done something like that for me before. I didn’t realize how much I needed it done until Sophia had found the balls to do it.
We broke apart before the kiss got away from us and we ended up naked on Emma’s bed. It was going to be hard—pun intended—enough to face everyone after that kiss, but if we’d actually gotten off, there’d have been no way of facing everyone.