Keep Me Still (15 page)

I
don’t know what’s changed in the past twenty-four hours, but Layla’s “live and let live” approach seems to have lost its appeal. We’re taking shots of tequila and she’s looking at me like she wants to bite me. After seeing her dancing in that tight-ass dress, I’m in.

Funny thing is, I had a completely different plan for tonight. When Skylar mentioned meeting up with them at a club earlier, I was dead set on flirting with some other girl in front of her so she could get a taste of her own medicine. I didn’t want to hurt her or anything, but I wanted to make her at least admit that she was jealous. That she had some kind of feelings for me other than that
friend
bullshit she was trying to sell me.

And then we walked in, and she was writhing against the music, her bare skin an array of colors under the flashing strobe lights, and I went so hard I had to sit down. Immediately.

Skylar and I were in the middle of giving each other shit about which one of us was more pathetic for coming here when Corin spun Layla around to face me. And damn, my erection died a painful death. She looked pissed. Super pissed actually, and I hated myself for ruining her night. I know what she’s been through, know better than anyone how hard it is for her to let go and have a good time. And I’d kind of hoped she might be happy to see me, but I’m a dumbshit apparently because she took off and disappeared into the crowd. Because I get off on punishment, I took off after her.

“If my being here is keeping you from enjoying yourself, I can go,” I tell her once we’ve ordered our second round of shots.

“Why would you say that?” She was laughing about my tequila face, but my words narrow her eyes and she’s still. I’m sitting on a barstool with her standing between my legs and my body is very aware of how well that dress hugs curves I don’t remember her having. Curves I want to get to know intimately in the very near future.

“You were tearing it up on the dance floor when I got here and now you’re not.” I shrug like I don’t need confirmation that she wants me here like I need my next breath.

“I’m having fun here. Why, you wanna dance or something?” Her tone is light, but her eyes are still guarded.

Or something.
We’re testing each other. Still putting on a show, when all I want to do is unravel her, peel away the pain, and get back to that level of comfort we had when she would fall asleep in my arms watching movies.

“I want to watch you dance.”

“Hmm…guess you should dance with me then. I mean, that’d be the best possible view.” She looks up at me through her eyelashes. “Unless you want me to dance with someone else.”

Like hell.
The mere thought has me ready to attack a faceless stranger for daring to touch her. “Lead the way and I’ll follow.”

The dance floor is crowded, and she’s still my Layla in a lot of ways, so she parks us on the periphery of all the other grinding couples. A slower song comes on and she’s moving tentatively around me, nothing like the sexy shimmy she was doing with Corin. I wrap my arms around her and pull her close to me so she can feel how turned on she makes me, and it seems to give her courage. And I have just thoroughly fucked myself because she’s pressed against my dick and I’m bulging so hard it hurts.

My mouth grazes her bare shoulder and she shivers. I’m about to press my lips to her exposed neck because God help me, I have to, when Corin and Skylar spin into us and Layla pulls away—just enough that she’s out of reach of my mouth. She glances shyly up at me, like they just caught us going at it or something, and I see that girl I knew a year ago. A million questions launch themselves in my brain but I’m ignoring those fuckers with all my might. This isn’t about questions and answers and clearing up what went wrong. I want her to have a good time, and I want her to be able to have a good time with me without all this shit between us. More importantly, I want
her
.

So I huff and puff and barely resist the urge to piss a circle around her every time another guy checks her out. We dance, and it’s fun. And hot as hell. Until her roommate pulls me aside when Layla’s talking to Skylar and tells me in no uncertain terms how many people she knows in New York who would be happy to puree my balls for the right price.

“Got it,” I tell her with a nod. “Balls gone.”

She glares at my answering grin, but I can’t be angry with anyone who obviously cares so much about the same girl I care about. There’s something about Layla that has everyone wanting to protect her. She’s tougher than when I first met her, bolder, but that vulnerability is still there, and it still sends testosterone coursing through me at dangerously high levels. I can’t take it anymore. I have to know the answer to at least one of my questions.

Leaning down so I don’t have to shout over the music, I let my lips graze her earlobe. “Can we get some air?”

She nods and we head toward the door. The outside air smacks me in the face, but it’s a welcome change from the damp heat of the club that had Layla’s intoxicating scent threatening to drown me. There’s something else coming off her, something warm and sweet, and once again, I’m barely controlling the impulse to lick her. Damn, there are
a lot
of places I’d like to lick her.

She’s leaning against the brick wall of the club and inhaling the fresh air as desperately as I am.

I clear my throat. “So Skylar’s really into your roommate.”
Or, he wants to get into your roommate.
Same difference for him I guess.

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“You having a good time?”

“I am. Are you?” Her shoulders stiffen and mine sag because we always come back to this. Plagued by this fear that we don’t feel the same way about each other looming over us.

“You
know
I am,” I tell her, stepping closer to remind her of how close we were a few minutes ago and how well she could feel what a good time I was having. “Can I ask you something? Maybe more than one something?”

She eyes me warily, like I’m either about to propose or tell her this was all a big joke. “If you must.”

Wow, we’ve been here before. The first time we ever talked. For half a second I’m that cautious guy again, afraid of offending or disappointing. But that guy struck the fuck out with this girl once already, so I’m done with him. “What is it about me that still has you all tensed up and pissed off? Because I didn’t come here to hurt you, not to this club and not to SoCal.”

So quickly I almost miss it, her walls come down, the ones she always puts up when I get too close. Her beautiful eyes open so wide I almost lose myself in the endless blue-green pools. But then she recovers, blinking and clearing her throat. Her defensive stance relaxes a little more and she sighs. “I keep telling myself I’m putting the past behind me, you know? Moving forward and all that. But sometimes when I see you, or you look at me a certain way, I’m right back there. Left behind in Hope Springs and…” She looks away briefly and I want to grab her, kiss her until any pain I ever caused disappears into the night. “Hurt. I was hurt. And angry. Here you had this other girl waiting for you, and I felt like a complete idiot when I found out.”

My head swims in confusion. “Whoa, what other girl?”

She glares at me for a full minute before answering. “
Danni
,” she spits out.

Danni?
“Jesus, Layla,
that’s
what you were so pissed about?” I snort out a laugh and she pins me with a fiery look as full of anger as I’ve ever seen her. “Her?”

“Don’t laugh at me, O’Brien. You were the first boy I ever liked that way, and I had all these plans of telling you after the Christmas parade, of letting you be my first kiss, and maybe more, and you and your friends dropped this…bomb on me. Bomb after bomb actually, and it sucked. Bad.” Her eyes flash, reflecting the pain I caused and didn’t stick around to heal. That damn parade. The one that ended with Danni and Tuck surprise attacking us and blurting out in front of Layla what I hadn’t yet told her.

“It wasn’t like that,
Flaherty
. Danni and I—” My words make her flinch. I reach out but she steps back, pressing herself up against the building to get as far from me as possible. “Layla, please listen. I was crazy into you. I just knew it was new for you and I wanted to take it slow. Which, by the way, wasn’t easy for me. And yeah, a relationship like that was new for me too, if I’m being honest. But Danni wasn’t even an old girlfriend. She was just my best friend’s sister and a girl who had a habit of being openly affectionate, and not just with me. She and Tuck know about my dad so they check in on me from time to time, but that’s it. Maybe she and I had a little fling the summer before but it was nothing like what you and I had.”
Have
.

I watch her bite her bottom lip, a storm swirling in her eyes as she contemplates my confession. “Well, you shouldn’t have let her kiss you like that when we were…whatever we were. And I shouldn’t have heard that you were moving back to Colorado from her.”

My chest tightens from the sting of the pain in her voice. “Agreed, on both accounts. I’m sorry.” Leaning into her space as far as I can without touching her, I lower my voice. “Forgive me?”

“I’ll think about it.” She’s smiling. And I can breathe again. “And now I get to ask a question.”

“Fair enough. Have to admit, knowing you were jealous is a pretty big turn on.” I shove my hands in my pockets so I don’t reach out and grab her to me like a fucking animal.

“Why are you at this college?”

My thoughts struggle to catch up to the abrupt subject change. “Um, to get a degree of higher learning and play soccer?” It’s a question instead of an answer and she doesn’t miss it.

“Are you asking me if that’s why?”

“I’m asking in hopes you’ll accept that answer instead of the real one.”

“Why?”

“So things don’t get weird.”
And you don’t run away screaming
.
Or hit me. Or hate me.
Truth is, I can never tell her the real reason I’m here.

“Can things get weirder than this?” she asks, stepping a little closer.

I hope to hell things can get weirder. I hope they can get downright awkward and uncomfortable, like maybe as she searches for her underwear on my bedroom floor later tonight.

Taking a deep breath, I give her the best answer I can. “I’m here because I couldn’t go to UGA after what happened. You blew me off and I was hurt too. I didn’t want to see you on campus, on the arm of some guy I might accidentally murder with my bare hands.” Kind of like I almost did Taite.

She cocks her head. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Not well.” I laugh uneasily. “Okay, my turn.”

She folds her arms, as if she’s trying to hold her secrets in, and I’m starting to like this game. A few girls giggling loudly behind me stumble past us into the club, and Layla smirks and raises an eyebrow at them. I’m pretty sure one of them checked me out. I wasn’t playing around earlier. Her blatant jealousy has my dick throbbing. But the answer to my next question will probably function to solve that problem.

“So lay it on me. Who ended up being your first kiss?”
Please be someone I don’t know.
I only had two friends, if you could call them that, in Hope Springs—Cam and DW. If it was one of them, I’ll be using my next long weekend to drive to Georgia and kick some ass.

Layla shakes her head, and for a second I think she’s just refusing, holding out on me. “We should probably get back in there before Corin sends a search party.”

“Whoa. I answered your question. All of them actually. So let me have it. I promise not to go looking for him.” I’m a dick, because that’s not entirely true and deep down I’m kind of hoping whoever it was sucked at it.

But then her cheeks go pink and hope runs wildfire rampant in my chest. She shakes her head again, biting her lip as her eyes say the one thing I want to hear. She’s never been kissed. My eyes zero in on her perfect untouched mouth. I reach out, using my thumb to pull her full bottom lip from between her teeth. “No one?”

She shrugs and I force myself to pull my hand from her mouth. She’s back to wearing that same tentative, guarded expression, and I’m feeling the screwed up combination of sheer joy at the fact that her mouth is still unclaimed and a significant degree of guilt for all the dirty thoughts I’ve been having for a girl who’s never even kissed a guy. Well, that part’s easy enough to fix.

“Don’t go running on me now, Layla Flaherty,” I say, giving into the urge to pull her to me. She feels so damn good in my hands, soft and firm at the same time. “Not yet.”

“Landen,” she breathes, placing her delicate hands on my chest but not making an effort to push. Or maybe I’m too full of myself to feel if she pushes. “Stop. We’re in public.”

Uh, yeah. And I was grinding all up on her ass in
public
a few minutes ago, but this is making her uncomfortable? Glancing around, I see a break between the club and the next building over so I pull her into it. “This better?”