All Over You (Unforgettable You, Book 1.5) (9 page)

She squeezes her eyes closed as if recalling the memory of seeing me with Angela, and it still hurts. I grab her hands in mine. I’m half expecting her to pull away and for a second I think she considers it. But then she opens her eyes and stares directly into mine, allowing her hands to remain clasped in mine.

“I never had sex with her,” I confess in an urgent whisper. Thank God the place isn’t crowded and no one’s paying attention to us. This isn’t exactly the ideal place to have this kind of conversation but it was the only place Becca would agree to meet me. I haven’t had sex with anyone while we’ve been apart but I’m not ready to tell her that. Talk about looking whipped.

“You didn’t?”

I shake my head and rub my thumb over the fleshy part of her palm.

“I haven’t had sex with anyone since you,” she says quietly, watching for my reaction.

Thank God.

A wave of relief along with a profound feeling of possessiveness washes over me. The thought of Becca having sex with other guys had kept me up more than a few nights.

Her admission makes it easier for me to put my ego aside. “Me either.” Okay, that wasn’t that bad.

“But why?” she asks, her voice incredulous.

I let out a humorless laugh. “It’s not that I didn’t want to. Sometimes I did. But I wasn’t going to do it with just anyone and I wasn’t looking for a one-night stand. I needed to care about her.” I’d had enough of those before I met Becca and I’d been determined not to start that crap again. I hadn’t been looking to raise any girl’s hopes if I could help it.

Overwhelmed is the word I’d choose to describe the way she’s looking at me right now. She slowly extricates her right hand from my grasp to cover her mouth, her eyes round with wonder.

After several seconds of silence, she drops her hand from her mouth. The light in her eyes and the smile on her face are worth every single day of my voluntary celibacy.

CHAPTER EIGHT

R
EBECCA

Despite the fact that Scott has reduced me to an emotional mess, I refuse to cry. I glance around the rapidly emptying coffee shop. At least not in public.

It takes me awhile to fully digest what he just admitted to me. Jealousy is not a pretty emotion and I’d always been good at hiding it—even from myself—but the thought of Scott with someone else used to drive me nuts. Seeing him with
that girl
last year had sent me to bed in tears five nights in a row. I’m not sure how I made it through my classes during that time given the fog of misery I’d been living in.

“
So last week was the first time since…?”

Smiling faintly, he nods.

Just checking.

“
So will you give me another chance?”

He looks so earnest, so damn sincere I want to kiss him. But as much as I want to throw caution to the wind, this time I’m going to tread carefully. Don’t get me wrong, I believe him. I get that he was scared. Who wouldn’t be? I think he would have stepped up if I’d been pregnant. Hopefully that would have been before the baby was born and he wouldn’t have waited sixteen years like John had done. Sometimes that kind of help comes an entire childhood too late.

“
Okay,” I say drawing out the word. “But I want us to take it slower this time. The last time—well you know—we…didn’t.” In other words, we talked on the phone for three weeks after we’d gotten back to our respective homes in our respective states. We’d had sex the first time Scott had driven up to visit me in Nevada, which had been five weeks after we’d met.

At the time, I’d felt I’d really gotten to know him in our five weeks’ worth of conversations. I mean
really
know him. So having sex with him hadn’t been something I’d had to think too hard about. It had felt right and I never once regretted it. Well that is until I’d thought I was pregnant and he’d gone AWOL on me.

Scott reflexively nods but not in agreement because a second later his eyes narrow and his head tilts slightly to the side. “What do you mean by slower,” he asks, watching me intently.

“
Sex. No sex.”

His expression shutters and suddenly I can’t read him. He goes still and his thumb stops stroking my hand. “No sex?” he asks hoarsely before clearing his throat.

“
I think that was our problem.”

His head rears back as his eyes widen in disbelief. He looks affronted. I hurry to appease the blow my statement must have dealt his male ego. Understandably so, I guess.

“
No, nothing like that. I mean because it’s always been the one place we never had any problems. And because of that, I think sometimes stuff gets blurred or missed. It fixed everything.” I don’t know if I’m making sense or not, or maybe the tautness of his jaw means he doesn’t agree with me. “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want that to be all we have.”

I didn’t expect my condition to be met with his wholehearted support and agreement. I knew Scott wouldn’t be happy about it but I hoped he’d understand where I’m coming from.

His jaw begins to tick. He clears his throat again before finally responding. “So how long do you see us not—I mean going slow?”

I stifle a laugh. How typical of him to want to be given a timeframe—not that I completely blame him. Hey, this whole
no sex
thing isn’t going to be easy on me either. “Well I hadn’t really thought about an exact timeframe.”

He sighs. “Becca, we’ve had sex before. I love having sex with you and I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual. I don’t know, it’s like trying to go back and forget that, you know, how good it is, how good it’s always been.”

My hesitancy must have showed on my face because he quickly adds, “I’m not saying I won’t do it. You know I will. I’m just saying it’s going to be hard. You know I’m not a saint.”

Not a saint
is code for horny as hell.

“
I just want us to work this time.”

At that, Scott briefly closes his eyes. Opening them, he stares directly into mine. “And that’s what I want too.” Giving all indication that he’s resigned himself to his fate, he lets out a weightier sigh. “Okay, we’ll do it your way. No sex.”

“
For now,” he adds, after a telling pause.

And that’s when I pretty well resign myself to
my
fate. Scott doesn’t want to go without sex and I have a feeling that my resolve is only going to be as strong as his willingness to keep his word. Which means this
no sex
thing is going to be the furthest thing from easy.

* * *

Later that night, clad in our pajamas, my roomies and I are comfortably ensconced in the couches; me and April on one and Olivia stretched out on the other, her head propped up by her hand and a throw draped over her legs.

I finally tell them the news they’ve been dying to hear since I walked in the apartment twenty minutes ago, that Scott and I are giving it another go. I have to give them credit for not looking too smug about it. They do grin like a couple of idiots though, as if they’d had a hand in it. Alright, they sort of did but that’s not the point.

“
So are you going to finally tell us why you broke up with him?” Olivia asks.

My gaze goes from Olivia and then to April. They’re both wearing identical expressions of curiosity. No, it’s more than that. They want me to trust them the same way they’ve trusted me with all their stuff.

I open my mouth and it all comes out, going from spitting rain to a torrential downpour. I tell them about the pregnancy scare and Scott’s reaction to it; the paralyzing fear that had consumed me for five days. I tell them everything. And it is good, almost cathartic to finally get it all out because this is something I hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Stephanie, my best friend from high school.

They take it in in shocked silence, their jaws slack and eyes round.

“
Wow. Oh wow,” is all April manages to get out.

Olivia’s reaction is slightly more eloquent. “Well thank God the test was wrong.”

I snort lightly. “It would have been better if it hadn’t been wrong to begin with but the doctor said it happens. Not a lot, but it happens. She said that user error is usually the cause of most false positives.” I make a face. “I’m sure she thought I either contaminated the sample or didn’t follow the instructions.”

April snickers. “Right. How hard is it to pee on a stick?”

I give a shrug. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

But I’d been such a nervous wreck when I’d taken the test. I’d bought it right after class and had taken it back to the dorm. I’m not sure I waited the whole five minutes it said on the box but I’m sure it’d been pretty close. When the plus sign had appeared, I’d thought I was going to pass out. Instead, I’d sat on my bed and cried. I cried for an hour before I’d called Scott.

To be fair, that’s not the kind of news a guy wants to get over the phone. It’s not the kind of news most eighteen-year-old guys want to get
at all
. Scott was no different. After I’d choked it out amidst tears and sobs, he’d come over right away. After he’d calmed me down and assured me everything would be okay and I’d told him I was going to make an appointment at the doctor to confirm it, he’d reminded me that he had to fly home the next day. Inside, I’d been freaking out but on the outside I’d pretended I’d be all right on my own.

“
I don’t understand why you slept with him after he came back,” April says as she shifts, curling her legs up on the other side of her body. “I mean if you were mad at him for not returning your calls and all that, when he came back why did you have sex with him?”

I shake my head in confusion. “I don’t know. I guess I thought that everything was back to normal now that we knew I wasn’t pregnant. When he came back, he seemed so happy to see me and, of course, I was still in love with him. But I realized after, you know, that
I
didn’t feel the same. The more I thought about how he’d treated me when he was back home in LA, the angrier I got. I kept thinking that he wouldn’t have been happy to see me if I’d actually
been
pregnant. That what he actually had been was relieved not so much as happy.”

April and Olivia both nod in understanding.

“
All I knew was I didn’t want to be with someone who wasn’t going to stick by me if I ever found myself in that situation. My mom’s a single mother and I’ve seen how hard it’s been for her to raise me by herself.”

“
Of course,” Olivia says softly, her eyes filled with sympathy.

“
But you believe him now, right? That he wouldn’t have bailed on you?” April asks as if needing the confirmation.

I nod slowly, my head bobbing up and down repeatedly. “Yes, I do now.” I shove aside any niggling feelings of doubt I may have.

He’s
not
like my father.

Scott wants me back. He fought to get me back like he hadn’t done a year ago. And I’m still in love with him. I want us to get things back to where we were before. To what we had before.

He’s not a thing like my father.

“
Well if it helps, I believe him too,” April says.

“
Me too,” Olivia chimes in.

I give a small smile and send up a silent prayer that things work out.

* * *

When I return from my shift at the library that Friday at six, my roommates practically accost me the second I enter the apartment. Because Zach has an away game and will be gone until Sunday, Liv and April decided to make tonight a girls’ night in, which usually entails watching Ryan Gosling movies while consuming pounds of salty snacks and gallons of carbonated beverages.

“
So tonight is your first official we’re-back-together-again date, huh?” April asks, already eyeing me up and down, her hand cupping her chin in a loose imitation of
The Thinker
.

“
Yep.” Given the choice between a movie or dinner, I’d chosen dinner. My thoughts: me and Scott in a darkened theatre wouldn’t be the best idea. But what am I going to do, avoid being alone with him…in the dark? And for how long? Although, it’s not like we’re horny teenagers who can’t control ourselves. Okay, so technically I’m still a teenager but I’m going to be twenty in four months.

“
Good. Well come on.” With that command, April turns and starts toward the bedrooms in the back, naturally expecting me to follow. Olivia is already two steps in front of me and one step behind her.

“
I’m going to make sure you’re dressed for the occasion. In other words, that he suffers the deaths of a thousand fires for making you break up with him in the first case.”