“That’s great,” I said. “But, still, even with scholarships, I know the math, and so do you.” I then added the apology I owed her. “I’m sorry about the other day. But please don’t let that stand in the way of doing something for yourself, something that you could do so well and that will help you pay your debts faster.”
“Make up your mind, Oliver,” she said harshly. “Am I a business prospect or a charitable cause?”
“You’re my friend!” I expelled desperately, loudly.
She folded in two in front of my eyes. It took me a moment to grasp that she doubled over in pain and tears.
I closed the distance between us, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her up, enveloping her entirely in my arms. Her face buried in my chest. My body absorbed the quivers of hers, my shirt her tears.
The feel of her, the warmth, softness, the scent of her hair. I inhaled.
I had never seen her cry before, though I had seen her pushing back tears. But everyone had a breaking point, and given what she’d been going through for months, for years, hers was a long time coming.
I was holding an extinguished sunshine in my arms, and all I could do was clasp her, stroke her hair, wipe the few tears I could reach with her face buried under my chin.
I tightened my hold on her, my hand splayed on the back of her head, my fingers laced in the soft curls.
January burrowed deeper against me and wrapped her arms around my torso.
Her body became still, and we just stood there in a tight embrace.
A moment later, I felt the kiss.
And then another. January kissed me just above the V-shaped neckline of my pullover. Open-mouthed kisses, her hot breath and wet tongue on my skin.
I froze. If I let my body react to this the way every part of me wanted, the way the immediate hardening in my jeans and the beat in my heart begged me to, she’d end up on this very floor with my hundred and eighty pounds on top of her.
“January, don’t.”
She wasn’t crying anymore. The fervent sobs had turned into feverish kisses on my neck and my chest where she had tugged down the hem of my shirt.
“January!” I repeated, trying to distance her from me. “Fuck.” Every shred of self-command in me was trying to fight the raging hard-on and how my hands and lips burned with a desire to touch her as I had dreamed of.
But by now, her lips glided up to my jaw, and our hands were gripping the other in a way that declared my defeat and my need to take charge and ravage her.
“You don’t want this, January,” I rasped. “You don’t know what you’re doing, what I am.”
My mouth said one thing, but my body and the way I crashed her to me so I could feel all of her told a different story. I couldn’t help the flames that were sending their scorching tongues everywhere in me.
“I knowyou.”
No, she didn’t. But instead of answering, I palmed her jaw and, with my mouth hovering above hers, I warned her, “You’ll regret this.”
“Maybe. I need this,” she breathed.
Devil help me, I did, too. I needed this. I neededher.
“You and I, Oliver,” she exhaled against my mouth, driving me further to the brink, “we’re alike in that. We both don’t need anyone … until we do.”
I wished I didn’t need her.
“I don’t give a duck anymore, Oliver,” she expelled.
I knew this feeling firsthand—of reaching a point where nothing mattered anymore, not even things that should.
“But you do, January. And so do I. I want to be your friend.” If she had saved me from myself before, I could at least try to do the same for her.
“My friend died today.” She collapsed in my arms, as if her body had given in to everything.
