Chapter Three
Hutch
We walked a littlefurther away from the crowd of people and the bonfire. I wasn’t sure what it was about Jillian that made me feel so relaxed or different, but maybe she made everyone feel that way. Maybe it was just her green eyes or her friendly smile; there was just something much deeper about Jillian that made all my anxieties just fade away. When the first bench came into view, she sat down and patted the spot next to her. I eased myself down without a second thought. I’m not sure how long we sat there in silence before I turned to find Jillian watching me.
“What?” I growled and felt her grow tense. “Sorry.” I dropped my gaze to my hands that were in my lap.
Jillian pulled her legs up onto the bench. “You were different before when we were alone,” she reminded me. I glanced over to find her hugging her legs against her chest. She had shorts on beneath her sweatshirt, but I caught a peek of her toned thighs, and a glimpse of what I hoped was her bathing suit.
“I’m different.”
“Don’t do that.”
I met Jillian’s eyes and quickly looked away. “This is who I am,” I reminded her as I dragged my toe around in a circle of sand. She didn’t know me or anything about me. I wasn’t like her friends, and Jillian needed to realize that. I blinked up in surprise as she suddenly got up to stand in front of me. “What are you doing?” When my gaze met hers, I wondered what would it be like to kiss those luscious lips or hold her in my arms?
“You’re not this person you’re pretending to be right now, Hutch.” Jillian reached out to touch my face with her hand, and I was sure my heart skipped a beat in my chest. Her hand was warm against my cheek, her palm soft over my skin. She slowly tilted my face up to hers.
I gritted my teeth. “What...Jillian—” I couldn’t think straight with her touching me like that. It got worse when she pushed my legs open so she could move between them, and my fucking cock grew hard as steel. It had been a very long time since a woman made me feel this way.
“Finish your story,” she whispered as the waves washed over the sand. “Tell me what you would do if you left this little shit town without looking back.”
I stared up into Jillian’s green eyes, her gaze so inviting that all I wanted to do was make her happy. “I wanted to see the world,” I confessed truthfully. “I wanted to backpack through Europe, take a safari through Africa, ski in Colorado, and go to a NASCAR race at Daytona. I wanted to work for NASCAR, too, if given the chance. I’ve always been fascinated by cars, which I guess is how I ended up working on them.” I wasn’t even sure I was breathing at this point. My lungs hurt from the lack of air, but I didn’t care as long as I did what Jillian wanted. She could have a kidney, or all the money I had in the bank right now, if she simply asked me for it.
“Why didn’t you?” She didn’t move from where she stood. Didn’t seem to care that her friends might be watching, or her lame boyfriend was going to be jealous of his girlfriend touching me. That her sister was probably gawking, or my brother was going to fucking kill me when we got home.
The answer to that question...I kept locked in a safe inside my mind that no one would ever open. “I changed my mind,” I lied through gritted teeth.
The moment vanished in an instant.
Jillian pulled away. “You could have come up with a better answer, Hutch.” She retreated further away from me. “I can hear it in your voice that you’re lying.” The sounds of laughing caused her to look back toward the fire where everyone seemed to have forgotten about us.
“Go back to your friends.” I stood up, but she stayed where she was. I looked down at her, at her small yet alethic frame, and wished that things could be different for me. That what had changed me never happened or that I could have her the way I longed to. Beneath me, above me, and fucking everywhere in-between.
Jillian kept her gaze away from me when she spoke. “Is that what you really want me to do?” Her lashes were so long they brushed the tops of her cheeks.
“No.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
