Chapter 12
Liv
Eight hours had passed, and I still felt his hands on my skin. It was as if his fingerprints were seared into my flesh, branded there with invisible scars, that only I could see or feel. I paced the floor of Brooke’s guest room until the early hours of the morning, rubbing at my skin. Was I trying to brush his touch off or knead it in, I didn’t know, but I kept rubbing and pacing—wearing a hole in the rug and making my skin tingle with fire.
Was he really going into work when he had just left there a handful of hours before? Or was he going back to Boozer’s for the sloppy drunk girls he left without saying goodbye to?
Was I just not enough? Why would he dance with me the way he did then? Why did he tell Brayden and the guys from Mad World that we were going home, to bed? Just so they couldn’t have me? Ha, that’s a laugh, I could go right back out and get all the bad-boy band cock I wanted.
I punched my fists into the pillows on the bed.
I’m the idiot who just wanted him.
What the hell did I do wrong?
Or did he really have to work? But he told whomever he was on the phone with that he had drunk four beers. His sergeant wouldn’t make him come back in with alcohol in his system, would he?
Or maybe it was me?
Why the hell were men so fucking confusing?
I flopped back onto the bed and stared blankly at the ceiling.
I guess it really didn’t matter, just like he said.
Either Dean wasn’t interested enough in spending more time with me or he had no time to give me. Either option was not good news for me. The question was: why did it matter? All I needed to do was stay until the handyman I hired installed a new door, and then I was back in my car on my way home. My so-called mother made it perfectly clear I was unwanted in her life, so why stay?
So I was just wasting my time pining over some guy whom I’d never really be able to have a relationship with. What did I want from him, just one night?
That was setting myself up for heartache, wasn’t it?
I needed to see the reality of my want. What I was craving was the potential of what we could have, not the reality of it. He had no time for me. I lived too far away. What did I think was going to happen?
And why couldn’t I stop myself from hoping?
At ten o’clock in the morning, Dean still hadn’t come home. I listened for any noise upstairs, and there was nothing. Again, I wondered if he spent the night with someone, or was he just at work all night. I didn’t think it was possible. Being at work for that long. At half past ten, I decided I wasted enough time thinking about him. He wouldn’t get any more of my thoughts.
I padded into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee.
The house was eerily silent. It didn’t look as if Brooke was up yet, so I just quietly leaned against the bay windows and held the warm mug in my hands.
Dean’s Jeep was still in the driveway, same position as the day before. But I wasn’t thinking about him anymore. Nope. Wasn’t having any Dean-like fantasies at all.
Pancakes.
Pancakes were the solutions to any of life’s problems.
Crazy drunk mother almost dying in a kitchen fire?
Make pancakes.
Guy you’ve crushed on secretly since your childhood still treats you like you’re fifteen?
Chocolate chip pancakes.
Guy you’ve crushed on said he was taking you home to bed only to leave you at the doorstep with nothing but wet panties and questions?
Chocolate chip pancakes with butter and syrup.
