“Maybe I am stubborn, David,” she murmurs, a little defeated, a little resigned. “But you are, too. And like I said, I’d rather be the girl who gives people chances and gets screwed over, than the guy who doesn’t care enough to let anyone in—who refuses to give people a chance just to punish them for a choice they made two decades ago!”
Shit. I don’t know what to say. The thing is, Beth is right. Of course she’s fucking right. And who the hell am I to judge her?
I suck in a deep breath and take a seat on the evil fucking couch, sagging under the weight of her accusation—of its accuracy, and what it cost me. Because I was too stubborn to reach out to my birth parents. At first. Until the night I snuck Beth into a nightclub in Puerto Rico, and she called me out on my bullshit. I’d said I wasn’t brave enough—she said I just didn’t really want it. She has no idea how right she was…is.
“I did.” My voice is so low that, if not for her soft gasp in the otherwise silent room, I’d think she hadn’t heard me. “Give them a chance.”
“You…you met them?” Beth whispers tentatively as she takes a few hesitant steps toward me.
I nod. “Well, I met her. Turns out he was only ever in the picture for the one night.” I resist the impulse to throw on a smirk and make light of it all. I think Beth has always seen through my bullshit anyway.
Beth closes the rest of the distance between us, and she shouldn’t. She really fucking shouldn’t. “When?” she asks gently, completely at odds with her tone of just moments ago.
“Few years ago,” I murmur. She’s close enough now that I can touch her, and I do. It’s not even a conscious choice.
I reach for her hips, my thumbs slowly brushing back and forth, just under the hem of her shirt. I pull her even closer, guiding her between my open legs, looking up at her from my seated position. She doesn’t resist. She should resist. Because I’m not sure I can.
“Well, what’s she like?” Beth’s hopeful eyes are wide with interest, and I don’t want to crush her, but I’m surprised to find that for entirely selfish reasons, I do want to tell her about Delia.
But first things first.
I pull Beth down to my lap, needing to feel more of her—though I’m careful to position her so her sweet, round little ass doesn’t meet the proof of how she affects me. But—inexplicably natural as it may feel—sitting like this, touching like this, it’s not something we do, and Beth’s eyes and mouth go adorably round as she gasps her surprise. The sound instantly resonates low in my belly, shooting straight to my dick.
In a small act of mercy, Beth doesn’t resist or pull away. Instead, her hands come up to brace against my shoulders, and just the sensation of her touch, even through my T-shirt, has me dying to feel her everywhere.
“So you want to hear about Delia?” I mean to sound teasing, but my husky tone makes it hard to pull off.
Beth nods a little uncertainly, and a loose lock of gold falls in front of the deep blue still waters of her eyes.
I tuck it neatly behind her ear, but not before stroking the soft strands with my thumb. “Okay. But first I want to know what you were doing at the rec center tonight.”
Beth’s eyes narrow slightly at my manipulation, but she gives in with a resigned sigh. “I signed up to take a dance class, okay? With Toni. It’s not a big deal—just for fun, you know?”
A dance class? Well, that was definitely not on my list of explanations for her disappearance, or imagined worst-case scenarios. My mouth twists into a smile. “That’s great, Bea.” And I mean it. “As long as you don’t walk there alone—at least at night, and at least for now.” I mean that, too, and I hold my breath, needing her to agree—to give me this. Some goddamned peace of mind. Because she’s driving me crazy. Or I’m driving myself crazy.
Beth rolls her eyes. “I thought we already talked about this.”
She tries to turn away but I grip her jaw, forcing eye contact. “So did I,” I grit out, my blood humming with frustration. “Did you even read my fucking note?”
“No,” she snaps back, yanking her face from my grasp, and she takes advantage of my moment of surprise, pushing off of my lap and putting a few inches of space between us.
I turn to face her on the couch. “No?”
“No,” she huffs again.
I raise my eyebrows, silently demanding an explanation.
But her eyes—those vast, expressive oceans that both hide and reveal so much—hold fierce. “I figured whatever you had to tell me you could do it in person when you saw me,” she says carefully. She pauses to let me feel the full weight of her implication, and I do. And it pummels me right in the chest. “I assumed it was just a list of safety rules, anyway,” she grumbles.
I barely manage to mask my wince. Not only do I feel like a bag of shit for spending the past few nights hiding from her in my frat house basement like a fucking loser, and even worse at hearing her call me out on it, but on top of everything, she’s fucking right. That note was mostly a list of rules. Well, that, and a reminder of what she already knew—already agreed to the night before. That as amazing as it was, it couldn’t change anything, and wouldn’t happen again.
But even as I think it, my dick twitches just inches from Beth’s perfect ass, precariously taunting me with the temptation of more.
“My dad used to do that,” Beth murmurs. “To my mom.” Her thin brows pinch together in thought, and I can’t help but think how adorable she looks like that. Still, I want so much to run the pad of my thumb over every frown line—to iron them out until her beautiful skin is free of them completely. “He’d get mad at her for some reason or another, and give her the silent treatment,” Beth continues. “For days, sometimes weeks. And these stupid fucking notes were the only way he’d communicate with her at all. Like he couldn’t even stand to look at her, let alone talk to her.”
I grab Beth’s wrist to get her attention, scooting automatically closer to her. Her eyes collide with mine—innocence, desire, and fear clashing with guilt, raging lust, and fear of something else entirely. “That’s not what that was about, Bea. I’m not like him,” I swear to her—to myself.
Her frown lines deepen. “I know that,” she whispers, and I believe her. I think she knows it with more certainty than I do.
