Impossible (24 page)

And, boy, was I going to make the first move.

Ashton

The cool and calm exterior I’d so carefully put in place quickly crumbled as soon as Luca began moving his lean and muscular body through the water towards me—his tattoos lay bare for me to see. Okay, fine. So I’d sort of lost my cool as soon as his shirt and jeans had come off. But, honestly, no one could keep calm after that.

Luca came to a stop quite close to me, and I stood motionless watching him, my toes digging into the rocky bottom of the pool. I was too nervous to move. Too nervous to speak. Too nervous to do anything myself. Why was I acting like a total fool? I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t interested when I was. Very, very interested.

The irony in all this was that I didn’t care what he looked like anymore. I didn’t care how he dressed, or if he wore eyeliner, or if he pierced himself like Eddie had. Sure, he was downright hot, but that didn’t matter to me as much as it had before. Oliver had been a looker with his baby blue eyes, blonde hair and well-muscled body, but he’d turned out to be an almost rapist.

No, what stood out to me about Luca was how much he cared. He cared about other people and he cared about me more than I deserved. He challenged me and he put me in my place when I acted like a complete snob—which was most of the time. He was kind, funny and super talented.

And I think I loved him.

My body ached to be pressed against his. I ached to have his lips pressed against mine. I waited, breathless, hoping he would do something. Hoping he would touch me.

I didn’t have to wait long.

Luca placed a hand on my shoulder and then moved it up to rest on my neck. Despite the warmth from the water surrounding me, goose pimples popped up on my arms. He pulled my head towards him and his smooth lips were on mine. His tongue slid into my mouth and I welcomed it, rubbing mine against his. An arm snaked around my waist and he pulled me against his wet body. The friction sent thrills through every part of me, and I was starting to lose sensation, even though every inch of my body was so alive.

He reached down to play with my breasts and I moaned, pressing myself harder against him. The kissing deepened and he held onto my face with both hands now, as though he was afraid I might disappear. I ran my hands along the muscles in his arms and over his abs, savoring the firmness of them. There was nothing holding me back. He was all mine.

We kissed, hungry for more, our lips raw and pink. It never seemed to be enough. Every time we came up for air, it was only a few seconds before our lips were on each other again. Luca trailed kisses down my neck, around my breasts, scorching my skin. We wanted to do more. So much more, but the water was an obstruction. When I pressed myself against his throbbing erection, Luca stopped.

His face was flushed and there was desperation in his eyes that made my stomach leap. He traced a line along my collarbone, eliciting a shiver from me. I wanted him to keep touching me. I wanted him to kiss me again, but he didn’t.

“Not in the water,” he said, his voice husky. He cocked his head towards the water bank and I nodded.

My heart was thumping, full of nerves and anxiety as we slowly climbed out of the pool, not once taking our eyes off each other. We didn’t need words to communicate what we both wanted—our actions spoke loud and clear. As we lay down on the picnic blanket with our bodies pressed against one another, I knew that there was nowhere else I’d rather be than in his arms.

***

After we were done, we lay wrapped up together in the picnic blanket as the sun tickled the parts of our skin that weren’t covered up. Luca played with a strand of my hair while I stared at the contours of his face, trying to imprint every mark, every line in my mind. Especially those eyes. I never wanted to forget the chartreuse in them or the yellow-green that encircled them.

Luca buried his head into my neck and I giggled as his nose tickled me. “Damn. You smell so good,” he murmured.

And then his lips were on my neck again, searing me. I arched my back against him as he sucked on my soft skin. He pulled me on top of me, keeping his lips on my neck as strands of my wet hair fell on his face. As I moaned against his mouth, Luca stopped and stared at me in amusement, like the world was playing some sort of joke on him.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, breathless. “Why did you stop?”

Luca gently removed me off him and propped himself up on an elbow, his expression inscrutable. “When we go back to school tomorrow, things will be different. How are we going to act around each other? I don’t know if I should avoid you or hold your hand.”

“You’re overthinking this.” I sat up and looked around for my clothes. “When we were pretending to date you were fine.”

Luca stood up, looking frustrated as he picked up his boxers and jeans and pulled them on. “That was different, Ash. That wasn’t real. This is. I wasn’t afraid of losing you the way I am now.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It affected me deeply, in some dark part of my mind, when he said things like that. I wasn’t used to people sticking around in my life. My only constant was my mom. Every other male figure in my life had simply left me. My biological father, Luca’s dad, and Bryan too. I’d had my walls up for years because they kept me safe. They kept me focused. I didn’t want to be weak. I didn’t truly want to fall for someone and give my all to them. I was afraid of being discarded.

Yet, Luca seemed different. He seemed to really care about me and, as hard as I’d tried to deny it, my feelings for him had never gone away. They were etched into every part of me; my laugh, my smile, my sadness. I’d pushed him away because that dark part of me figured that he would leave me anyway, but that wasn’t true. Luca would never do that to me. We were one and the same. He needed me just as much as I needed him.

Wanting a distraction from the reality I refused to face, I sought out my jeans and t-shirt so I could get dressed. Before I could get up, Luca was already picking them up and handing them to me. Despite the special moment we’d shared, the mood was melancholy.

Once my clothes were back on, Luca finally spoke. “You can’t ignore what I just said, Ashy. Say something, at least. You can leave here and never have anything to do with me or we can give this thing, whatever it is, a shot.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Whatever you want, I need to hear it from you. I don’t want to assume anything.”

The fear snaked its way through my veins and wrapped around my heart, constricting it. If I didn’t say anything, would he leave me? Would he never come back? If I told him I never wanted to see him again, would he simply let me go? Was it that easy for him?

The fear turned into panic and I clutched my chest, trying to keep my breathing under control. Alarm was visible in Luca’s eyes as he ran to me and cupped my face in his hands. “Ashton, what’s wrong? Calm down. It’s gonna be okay. I’m sorry I pushed you. We don’t have to talk about this.”

I waved him off, bitter tears coming to my eyes. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

Luca groaned in frustration and placed his hands firmly on my shoulders. His green eyes bore into me as he spoke. “Let me tell you this once and once only. What I said was to make sure you didn’t feel like you were obligated to be with me just because…we had sex. I told you, I’m afraid of losing you. Do you think I’d say that and not mean it?”

Biting my lip, I hung my head and stared down at the ground. “Sometimes people say things, but do something different.”

Luca lifted my head up so that I was staring into his eyes again. “Ashton, I would never do that to you. If you told me to stay away from you, believe me, I couldn’t do it. I’d try to change your mind. Before things were different, but now I can’t be without you. I have to have you. I love you.”

My insides quivered as we stared at each other. The look in his eyes made my knees shake. “You…”

He nodded. “I love you, Ashton.”

My breath caught in my throat. A million thoughts were running through my mind, but one thought began to form clearly, wriggling its way to the forefront. “I love you too.”

Luca placed a hand on the side of my face. “Remember when we made that deal that I would pretend to date you in exchange for a favor?”

I nodded, wondering where he was going with this.

“Well, I’m cashing it in now. Don’t ever leave me. Don’t let me go. Always stay with me.”

“Luca, you don’t need to cash in that stupid favor for me to be with you. I want to be with you for you, not because I owe it to you. You never have to worry about me letting go.” I leaned forward to kiss him, but Luca took a step back.

“What’s wrong?”

He stared at me like I was a ghost. “I’m trying to make sure this isn’t a figment of my imagination.”

“It’s not,” I reassured him, bringing his warm, delicious mouth to mine, where it belonged.

Luca

My hand rested on Ashton’s thigh on the drive back home. She hadn’t said much and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I hoped she wasn’t feeling awkward about what’d happened between us. I didn’t want to push her away.

It hadn’t been my intention to have sex with her—I’d only wanted to remind her of the good memories we’d had at Willow Creek as children—but the moment had felt right. I really hoped she didn’t think I’d taken her there with ulterior motives.

“Are you okay?” I asked, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye.

Startled by the sound of my voice, she looked around at me and smiled. That smile was the one I lived for, and it filled me with pride that I could still bring it to her face.

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

Satisfied with her response, I focused my attention back onto the road. There wasn’t a hint of deception in her voice. She wasn’t trying to throw me off. She really was fine.

“Luca?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think I’m a complete idiot?”

Rounding a curve, I turned to look at her again. “Why would you say that?”

She sighed. “Because you were right in front of me the entire time, but I kept going after the wrong guy, hanging out with the wrong people. All this time wasted that I could’ve spent with you. I never took a chance; I never tried to know you again. Does that make me stupid?”

I shook my head, hating that Ashton was still fixed on the past. “All of that doesn’t matter anymore. I’m just as much to blame as you are. Maybe more. But there’s no point in replaying the same thing over and over. We have to get over it.”

“You sound old and wise,” Ash said with a hint of a smile in her voice.

“It took me a long time to move on from Dad’s death. I learned a lot from all the miserable, lonely months I spent hating the world.”

“How did you do it?”

I thought back to the time when I’d been in such a dark place, haunted by the absence of my dad. The suddenness of his death, the fact that I didn’t get to say goodbye, was tearing me up inside. Then one day, I’d gone down to the garage and found his guitar.

“Music,” I said. “That’s what helped me through.”

“Music, really?”

I nodded, my eyes finding her again. “When I’m singing, when I’m playing that guitar, I feel like I’m in my own world. I don’t see anyone, I don’t hear anyone. It’s just me letting it all out. I feel so free.”

“That’s incred—Luca! WATCH OUT!”

My eyes snapped back to the road ahead of me. An oncoming car veered into our lane to avoid a large branch that was in the middle of the road.

Adrenaline surged through me, and I slammed on the brakes and swerved to the right.

The car skidded off the asphalt road and onto the dirt, avoiding the oncoming car which kept on driving past. We stopped within feet of a large tree. If I’d braked any later, we would’ve been dead.

I turned off the engine and looked over to see if Ashton was alright. Since her warning scream, she’d been quiet. God, I hope she didn’t have a concussion.

Ashton was staring down at her lap, gripping the seatbelt with a hand, knuckles white. She was shaking and, when she looked up, her eyes were vacant and unseeing.

“Ashy, are you okay?” I asked in concern, as I undid my seatbelt so I could reach her better.

Ash lifted up her hand and studied it. “Blood. So much blood.”

“W-what? Where? Are you hurt?”

I was really worried now. I scrambled around in my seat, trying to get to her, but she pushed me away, shaking her head. “No, not me. Him.”

What the hell? Had the guy in the other car gotten hurt and I just hadn’t realized it?

“Ashton, what are you talking about?”

“There was so much blood, Luca.” She looked up at me again, her eyes shining with tears.

“Ash, what…?”

“Remember that time you asked me why I didn’t drive?” She laughed like she’d said something funny. “What were the chances you would ask me that?”

I nodded, wondering what that had to do anything. I was more worried about her and if she was alright. She definitely wasn’t acting normal. Maybe this close call had added to her bad experience with Oliver. Maybe it’d pushed her over the edge.