But he didn’t.
“Okay,” he said as he squeezed my hand in return, “thanks.”
We kept our hands together for the rest of the ten-minute ride back to my house. It was never uncomfortable or weird. To me it felt perfect and I could only assume since he didn’t pull away either, that it felt the same to him as well.
Somehow, we both managed to wake Reid up enough to get him into the basement through the side entrance without making too much noise. After he flopped down on the couch, I grabbed a bucket from the laundry room and put it next to the couch. “I’m just gonna go let my parents know I’m home and that you guys are with me. I’ll be right back.” Shane sank onto the small sofa as I made my way up stairs.
When I came back down, he was sitting there in the darkened silence, his elbows resting on his thighs, hanging his head in his hands. Shoving my hands into my back pockets, I rocked on my heels, totally unsure of what to say.
“Listen, about before,” I said, awkwardly trying to start the conversation.
Shane leaned back on the couch, folding his arms behind his head. My eyes were drawn to his biceps and shoulders, the muscles bunching slightly under the short sleeves of his T-shirt. “Yeah, about that,” he added quietly as he focused his eyes on mine.
I sat next to him, folding one leg under my body, turning toward him. “I don’t regret it. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now,” I admitted. He sat there like a statue, before his eyes starting searching my face for more.
“I don’t know what the fuck to think. This is all so fucking confusing.” Shane’s voice wavered with heavy emotion, but he was careful not to wake Reid. Even though he said he was confused, that he wasn’t sure what to think, his eyes kept darting back to my lips.
I inched closer to him, my knee gently brushing against his thigh. Taking a deep breath, I reached up and cupped his jaw, running my thumb against the scratchy stubble there. He closed his eyes as a shaky breath escaped past his slightly parted lips. “Then don’t think. Just feel.” I swallowed hard, a world of new feelings swirling around me like some crazy-ass kaleidoscope of endless possibilities.
I pulled his face to mine and he leaned into me willingly. With our lips barely touching, I whispered, “Just feel this. We’ll worry about the other shit later.” He leaned his forehead against mine and I felt his hot breath wash over my lips. He licked at his bottom lip and my heart beat a frenetic tattoo in my chest forcing my blood to thrum wildly in my veins. I couldn’t hear anything except the loud rush of blood pounding in my ears and the frenzied breathlessness of our ragged desire.
We were all lips and tongues – tasting, devouring each other. Unfolding my leg from underneath me, I twisted us so that Shane’s back rested against the arm of the couch. With our bodies aligned, I could feel every single inch of him beneath me. Instinctually, my hips rocked against his, grinding against his rigid hardness. Shane groaned into my mouth and I pulsed painfully behind the zipper of my jeans. His back arched off the couch as he pushed back against me, revealing a small sliver of his tight stomach.
Keeping one hand on his jaw, I reached down with the other, ran it across his hot skin and up under his shirt, across his chest. We didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. Words weren’t needed to communicate what was going on between us. When I strummed my thumb over the flat disc of his nipple, his hips lifted off the couch once more and he coiled his arm around my waist, pulling my body tightly to his.
“Dylan,” he panted, the pause allowing me to kiss a heated path from his lips, to his jaw and down his neck.
My response was a simple “hmm” against his skin.
“I don’t…I mean…I can’t…” I heard the nervousness mingled with his desire. I heard the trepidation at moving forward, laced together with the excitement. But I wanted him to want it as much as I did, so rather than pushing forward, I pulled away.
We both rolled to our sides, facing each other on the couch. Gently, I ran my fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes at my touch and I noticed the faint yellow outline of his most recent black eye. My stomach churned with anger at the thought of anyone hurting him, much less his own father.
“We don’t have to do anything. Just relax and we’ll talk in the morning,” I said as I continued to stoke his hair, a more-than-satisfied smile pulling at my mouth.
Shane fell asleep in my arms and I watched the worry wash away from his ruggedly handsome face. The tension that usually creased the corners of his eyes smoothed as he drifted peacefully into a world where fathers didn’t beat their children and where thoughts about who you were didn’t plague your consciousness.
I slipped out from his side and pulled a blanket over him, knowing it wouldn’t do well for any of us if Reid woke up and saw us curled together on the couch. After one last kiss to his forehead, I laid back in the recliner next Shane, letting the sounds of his light snoring lull me to sleep.
The locker slamming shut right next to my head made me jump. “The fuck?”
I could tell it was Dylan before I saw him, his smell invading my space, making me feel weak all over. “Did you pass?” He leaned his back up against the bright red locker and I watched as he adjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder. His hands were perfect and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from them.
The hand I was just staring at – fantasizing about touching me, waved in front of my face. “Huh?”
“AP Bio. Did you pass? You said you had a final today in class.”
I shut my own locker and tossed my bag over my shoulder. “Not sure. It was tough.”
“I’m sure you did fine. You always do.” Dylan’s faith in my abilities never failed to amaze me, but the honest truth was I failed miserably. I didn’t know a single fucking thing on there. Sadly, I was failing pretty much everything. With baseball season done, and the state championships over and lost, I didn’t have much to keep me motivated.
Not to mention there was a huge fucking weight on my back of simply figuring out what the hell to do with the rest of my life. Looking at the inside of the proverbial closet was high on my list.
Dylan bumped his arm against mine, stirring me from my dark thoughts. “You okay?” His voice took on that softer, more intimate tone, the tone he reserved for the times when it was just the two of us. The problem was that right now, in-between the seventh and eighth period walk toward my calculus class; we were most definitely not alone.
I shrugged, scanning the hall before answering him. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered him quickly. “I’ll see you later.” Dismissing him, I walked into my last class of the day, of the year actually. Holy shit, come to think of it, this was my last class of my entire high school career. When the fuck did that happen?
In the last two weeks, I was so distracted by the end of baseball season, my father’s endless rants about what a loser I was since, well, since I’d lost states, letting up a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth.
