Taking a breath, I forced a smile. “Great. Glad we got that cleared up.” I tucked some hair behind my ear. “I’ll see you later, then, I guess.”
He placed a hand on his doorknob. “Good night, Isla.”
Turning, I opened my door and closed it behind me. The dark apartment greeted me as I leaned against the door, my head resting back with a soft thud.
It had been less than two hours since I’d left this apartment, excited about the night and about kissing Slate. Now I wished I could slap that naive girl and tell her to not let Slate worm his way into her mind and her…
Gosh, I couldn’t even think it.
Not my heart. How dumb would it be to let him into my heart?
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
This was where the feelings ended. I’d build an unbreakable wall, an impenetrable fortress.
Because if I didn’t? Not only would I end up with a broken heart, I’d lose one of my best friends.
11
Slate
My alarm would be going off soon, but I was already wide awake, not able to shut off my brain.
It hadonlybeen two weeks since my hardcore makeout session with Isla at that Sigma Chi Halloween party, and I was still thinking about it. Two weeks had never dragged out so long before.
We’d been a lot more careful with our PDA since then, only touching if absolutely necessary. The closest I’d gotten to kissing her was a quick peck on the cheek occasionally when we were on campus and saying goodbye.
Was I still thinking about that kiss from two weeks ago?
Yes wasn’t a strong enough answer. I’d thought about it every day for two weeks, several times a day. Yeah, it had been a torturous two weeks, filled with anxiety and cold showers.
Did I mention that it had been two extremely long weeks?
I couldn’t get the kiss out of my mind. I couldn’t getIslaout of my mind.
Other than my mother’s death, I’d never had something—or someone—take over my thoughts in a way that was all-consuming. And it terrified me.
I didn’t get close to people. I didn’t let people inside the walls I’d built around myself. Wilder was really the only person whom I’d ever let all the way in. We might not have been blood related, but he was my brother in every other sense of the word. I had recently warmed up to the idea of letting Rush all the way in, but that had been two years in the making.
So what the hell was I doing letting Isla slide past my barriers and come waltzing into my life in a matter of months?
I could justify and rationalize that it had to do with how she wasn’t a dude and how I was so attracted to her that I couldn’t think straight, but that wasn’t completely true. I’d been attracted to a lot of women before, and I’d never been tempted to get close to them. Not once. Not even for a fraction of a second.
But Isla? She was tempting me at every turn, every conversation, every smile, every touch, every laugh. When I was with her, my chest didn’t feel so tight, and I could breathe easier. The constant weight I carried around—with her, I could push it away for a few moments.
When I was with her, I was happy and telling her things I didn’t talk about, ever. I still couldn’t believe I’d told her about my mom. That I had told her about my dad was huge. I didn’t even know if Rush knew about that. It was possible Wilder might have hinted at it, but neither one of us had come right out and told Rush anything.
Things between Isla and me were confusing. The more time I spent with her, the more time Iwantedto spend with her, the more I wanted her to know me.
I was worried things were evolving into something more, but I couldn’t even be sure because I’d never experienced it before. Maybe this was normal friendship stuff and the whole attraction thing was getting in the way and complicating things.
But then the memory of kissing her at the Halloween party flashed through my mind again. When we’d been kissing, there hadn’t been a single thought of being just friends. I’d wanted her in a way that couldn’t be explained as friendship—or faking. Everything that had happened between us that night had been real. The pretense of why we had started kissing had been to keep up appearances, but as soon as our lips had touched, all the pretending had gone out the window.
If I was being honest, the realness of it all had started before the kiss. I’d known she would look amazing in her Halloween costume, that we would have to sell the whole couple thing, and I had been prepared to play my part. But what I hadn’t expected was what would happen when I saw her. Something had sparked to life inside of me, a feeling that was foreign to me, one that I couldn’t find a word to describe. And it hadn’t had anything to do with how sexy she had looked, but it had everything to do with her being there. With me. An alpha male response, and I wanted everyone to know that she was mine.
Which was totally insane. She wasn’t mine. I’d never wanted someone to be mine. But the need to mark my territory with Isla was still there, despite it being out of character for me. Things had only gotten worse as we’d made out. With each second we’d kissed, I’d gotten farther and farther away from my lifelong resolve, abandoning my safe place in a heartbeat, like I hadn’t worked my entire life to stay there. Things had begun to spiral out of control.I’dlost control. And Ineverlost control.
