Tasting Never (19 page)

“
What
is it?” he whispers and what he really means is,
What's
going to kill you?
I reach out, cup his face with my hand and
tell him the truth in all its beauteous, righteous glory.

“
I'm
going to live.”

29

“
Holy
fucking shit!” I shout as I leave the lecture hall and find Ty
waiting for me in the courtyard. He picks me up as soon as I walk
over to him, swinging me in a circle, warming me with a welcoming hug
that I know Lacey is jealous of, even if she doesn't admit it. Trini
must still be in class and is nowhere to be seen. When Ty sets me
down, I see that he's grinning. He looks awfully cute in his winter
coat. It's puffy and has fur around the collar, giving him this look
that guys only ever have in romance movies. “I did it,”
I say as I put my hands on my hips and watch my breath hang in the
cold air. “I finished out the semester without killing
anybody.”
Or fucking anyone.

“
Congratulations,”
Lacey says as she gives a tight-lipped smile to some boys who are
checking her out. She's wearing a T-shirt that says
Lipstick
Lesbian
on the front. I don't think she could be anymore obvious
about it, but poor Lacey is hot. She's that perfect blond goddess
with the golden legs and the big, blue eyes. I guess we all have our
crosses to bear. “What are you going to do for break?”
she asks, and I shrug because I haven't the slightest clue. I've
been toying with the idea of going home for awhile, but I don't know
how to make that decision. Do I call? Do I just show up? What if
they turn me down, tell me to go away? Even worse, what if they beg
me to stay? What do I do with Ty? “Trini and I are going to
spend some time at my uncle's cabin,” Lacey says dreamily. Ty
and I exchange a glance and a smile. When my phone beeps, I glance
at it absently, expecting another missed call from Beth but instead
find that I have a text message. The only people that would be
texting me are standing on either side of me, cheeks and noses pink
in the frigid air. Beth hasn't messaged me yet, but I check anyway,
just in case it's her.

I
don't recognize the number it came from, but I do recognize the area
code. This is a message from home. I open the text and read it,
convinced that the universe is playing tricks on me, fucking with my
mind, my insanity.

The
text message is from Noah Scott.

I
drop the phone to the pavement and don't bother to stop Ty when he
bends down to pick it up.

Your
sister gave me your number. I miss you, Never. I'd love to see you.
Give me a call.

At
first, I'm crying because I don't know what to say or do or think. I
dash the tears away quickly before Lacey gets a chance to see them,
but Ty saw. I know he saw.

I
swallow my emotions and look up at Ty. He has a detached sort of
look on his face, like he can't quite believe it himself. Lacey
remains oblivious, more concerned with Trini and why she isn't here
yet.

“
I
hope she's doing okay on her exam. This is the one that she's most
worried about.” Ty and I ignore her and exchange a heated sort
of a look. His dark eyes are flickering like a dying fire, and I'm
sure mine aren't much better. I think a lot about Noah, and I tell
Ty every single time I do. I've told him that I thought Noah
might've been my fairytale ending. I've told him that the sex I had
with Noah was the most meaningful I've ever experienced. I tell Ty a
lot of things. What he probably thinks but that he doesn't tell me
is that there's a definite possibility that I'm turning Noah into
some kind of unattainable goal, making him this perfectly godly
standard that no man can match up to. I'm willing to deal with that,
but I need Ty to help me realize that; I need him to step in and
convince me otherwise.

“
What
do I do?” I ask him, and notice that his eyes are a little
glassy, too, a little dewy. What is he thinking? What's going
through his mind right now? Things have been good between us, great
actually.

“
I
don't know,” he tells me honestly. “That's up to you to
decide.” I look down at the phone as he hands it to me, at the
single text message from my past and I'm suddenly unsure. I've been
making a lot of progress lately, but I don't know what to do about
this. “Can I make a suggestion?” Ty asks as he leans
down, grabs my hands and pulls me to him. Without another word, he
leans down and kisses me. Heat sears straight through me, takes hold
of my trembling body and burns. That addiction that Ty is for me,
that wrongness and that pain, it's there now and it's pulsing, making
my lips hurt, my heart seize up, my eyelids flutter. And Ty knows
it. Fuck him, but he knows exactly what he's doing.

“
Aw,”
Lacey says from behind us. I push back from Ty enough that I can
take a breath, that I can look into his face and try to figure out
what it is that he's feeling. Jealous? Scared? It's hard to say.
I think he's shutting down and that scares me even worse. “You
guys are so cute together,” she says as she presses a kiss to
both our cheeks. “But I see Trini down the hill. I'm going to
go meet her. See you after break?” I nod absently because I'm
too concerned with this sudden development in my life. I am walking
a tightrope here, any bit of wind is liable to knock me over. “Call
me!” Lacey shouts as he disappears and leaves Ty and me alone
with the dead tree and the little brick wall.

“
Want
to come over?” Ty asks me, and I know for certain that this
time, it's a loaded question. Old habits die hard. It's too true.
I nod my head and let Ty take my hand. If he wants to convince me to
stay, then I'll stay, I'll do whatever he wants me to do because I'm
in love.

30

Ty's
hot mouth is on my neck, and I find myself taking short, sharp,
little breaths as I press my shaking hands to his chest. If I sleep
with him again, I'll be making the biggest mistake of my life. He's
the first real friend I've ever had, and I don't want to cheapen the
feelings that are simmering between us. We made that mistake once
before, and we survived. We've been through a lot since then, and I
know that if I lose him now, I will never be whole again. Ty is my
other half, lover or no, and just being around him is enough for me.

“
Ty,”
I say, trying my best to sound stern. Instead, my voice comes out
like a butterfly, flutters against Ty's hair and swirls it gently
against my lips. I moan and find that my fingers are now curled in
the fabric of his T-shirt.

“
Never,”
he says back to me, the word like fire against my skin. In those two
syllables, I hear how he feels about me. He thinks he's in love. Ty
McCabe thinks he's in love with me. He doesn't say it aloud, but I
can tell. Sex isn't the best way for me to show my feelings; I've
abused it for far too long that it has somehow lost some of its
meaning. I try to tell Ty this, but I can't speak with his lips on
my throat and his hand sliding across the nape of my neck.

I
run my own hands down his chest and put them beneath his shirt, on
the hard plane of his belly. His muscles contract as I press my
fingers into them, touching, feeling, absorbing the man, the
complication, that is Ty McCabe. All the while, my mind is racing in
circles trying to talk me out of this.

“
Kiss
me,” Ty says and it's not a question, it's a request, albeit a
gentle one. His voice is softer than I've ever heard it. His words
are naked, stripped of all the bullshit that's happened to him, all
of the horrible things that mirror my own life. Ty and I are like
twins, like two halves of the same whole. They say that opposites
attract, but Ty and I are very much the same and the attraction
between us burns brighter than the sun. “Kiss me,” he
says again and I do.

Our
lips touch and the darkness that's always made up my life, parts like
a curtain, opens up wide and flashes me the sun. Ty's kiss, his
touch, his words, our friendship, all of it runs over and through me,
and suddenly, I'm pulling away because I can't breathe.

“
Ty,”
I say as he follows after me, and I sit down hard on the edge of his
bed. “You mean more to me than sex.” It's kind of a
weird thing to say, but I know he gets it, and I hope he feels the
same way.

“
I
know that,” he tells me as he puts his hands on his hips and
tries to breathe.

“
So
let's not do this,” I say as I fall back into the messy covers
and try not to think about how many girls Ty might've fucked in this
apartment. “I like things the way they are. You're my best
friend, my reason for getting up in the morning, the only thing in
this world that convinces me that it's worth the effort to breathe.”
He sits down next to me and sprawls out on his side like he's done a
million times in the blur of afternoons we've spent together. When
Ty brushes the hair from my forehead, the feel of his fingertips
against my skin is like torture. He doesn't mention Noah. Neither
of us mentions Noah.

“
Why
do you say things like that?” he asks with a smile. “It
makes it hard for me to one-up you.” I roll my eyes and try
not to think about how tender my lips feel.

“
At
this point,
not
having sex with you is about the best way for
me to show that I care. Besides,” I reach into my pocket and
pull out my celibacy chip. It's bright blue and shimmers like a gem
in the small shaft of sunlight that's managed to penetrate Ty's
heavy, black curtains.
One Month.
“You don't really
want to miss out on next month's, do you? I hear that it's purple.”

“
Never
… ”

“
And
anyway, I stopped taking the pill after that first meeting, and I
don't have any condoms around. I never used them anyway.” I
stop talking and almost choke on the feelings that sweep through me.
I dodged so many bullets that it's not even funny. For Ty and I both
to be free of any STDs is a miracle that defies the statistics of our
current world. Ty knows me too well now. He knows that I'm babbling
because I don't have anything real to say. “You're supposed to
be my sponsor, you know. This is like asking an alcoholic to come to
a bar with you.”

“
You're
not a fucking alcoholic,” Ty says as he pulls the celibacy chip
from my fingers. “Let's use a different comparison. What if
you were a food addict? You can't just stop eating. You just have
to stop eating
everything,
right?” I try to reach for
the chip, but Ty throws it across the room where it hits the wall and
falls to his dresser. “And fuck purple, Never, I want you.”

“
Ty,”
I say, but I don't know what else should come after that word, so I
just stop talking. I try to turn away from him, but he grabs my hips
and pulls me back.

“
You
can't run from this forever,” he says as he leans down and
presses a series of warm kisses to my neck, working his way down to
my collarbone. I grab him by the hair and pull his face up to mine.

“
Taking
me to that meeting was your idea, and now you're pissed because I'm
actually following the rules? I thought you wanted me to stop having
sex. I thought
you
wanted to stop having sex.” Ty
laughs and scoots forward, so that his hip is partially atop mine.

“
Wrong,”
he tells me as he gives me a dimpled smile. “My goal was for
us to stop having sex with people we didn't know, didn't like, didn't
care about. My goal was to stop you from having sex with other
guys.”

“
Why?”
I ask defiantly, reaching up and putting a hand between Ty and
myself. My fingers splay open against his chest. Ty smiles and uses
one arm to prop himself up and the other to brush the hair from my
forehead.

“
Because
you're mine,” he says and then he leans down, forcing my arm
out from between us and around his neck. I'm weak when it comes to
Ty McCabe. I don't know when it happened or why but somehow I've
been roped into falling for one of these dark boys with the angry
pasts, one of these boys that I've always fucked but never loved, one
of these boys who is more than capable of burning me if I let them.
But how can I say no with his mouth pressed against mine, hot and
hungry? What can I do when my body, my brain and my soul all cry out
for his touch, his words, his look? I've never had so many parts of
my being in agreement before. Always there was something telling me
that what I was do
ing was
wrong. Everything about this feels right. It's like I can finally
see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've been in darkness for so
long that it's easy for me to recognize this burning color, this
brightness that I've been denied for far, too long. Ty McCabe has
brought it out of me, and I can't say no. He won't let me say no.
I
don't want to say
no.

Ty
and I brush our lips against one another, rubbing the heat of our
tongues together as our hands touch, explore each other's bodies like
we've never touched before. And we haven't, not like this. I've
never
been touched like this before. Not by Noah, not by
anyone. I reach my fingers under Ty's shirt and he sits up just
enough that I can pull it over his head. I've been wanting to do
this for a long, long time. I run my fingers up the hard lines of
his belly, tracing his abs with my nail, feeling them contract
beneath my touch. He groans and arches his back like he can't stand
even the barest brush. I love knowing that I can have this much
effect on him, and smile.