Jay felt the counter slam up against her back. Her panic, and his knowing, bitter smile, took her breath away. “Shut up, Nick.”
“Have we moved on to denial already?” He stepped closer, putting his hands where hers had fled. “That was fast. Usually, I have to fuck you first.”
She drew in an angry breath. “You don’t understand—”
“No, Jay.Youdon’t understand. Every time you ask what people will think, you’re framing our relationship around the fact that we grew up together. And we did. But then I grew up—and I wanted you. I wanted you so badly that I used to think it would drive me fucking crazy. It was like I couldn’t breathe. Have you ever wanted something that much?”
She opened her mouth, but he didn’t give her time to respond.
“If it were up to me, I’d have dragged you to the altar myself. But I waited—for you. And if your plan is to dick me down before sending me on my way like some callow pool boy, you should know that I’m not going to give you up without a fight.”
“I’m notdicking you down.” Jay was aghast at his choice of words, at the cruel comparison to her mother and her younger lover.Although isn’t it the same? She hid him away, too.She clenched her fists, wishing she could fight the voices, and banish the pain that threatened to subsume her heart every time shelooked in his eyes. “You blackmailed me. You took things from me that I willneverget back.”
“Then why,” Nicholas said slowly, “are you still here?”
“Because Ilivehere.”
She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but his laughter still made her angry, and so did the ripple of muscle contracting along his chest and abdomen because also, how fucking dare he look likethatwhile she was angry at him, but this time, when she swatted at him, his fingers shackled around her wrist.
“Oh, Jay,” he said, and she hated the way he said her name, the way it curled up around her insides like plumes of fragrant smoke. “You don’t even realize I’ve got you up against the wall.”
“I’m not going to stand here and be lectured by a—by a walking Oedipus complex.”
He stepped closer, and the sinuous lines of his body blurred before her wavering vision as she felt the heat coming off his skin, and the clean smell of his sweat filled her nose.
“Do you really mean to tell me that you’d leap into my arms if I were a stranger at a bar? Somehow I doubt that. You like making people work for it. That’s why you never fucked any of your high school boyfriends. They didn’t have the stamina to jump through all your hoops.”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“From the moment that you jumped up my ass about that cat in the tree, I knew you would be a breath of fresh air from all of the surface-level bullshit artists surrounding me. You were so authentic, soyou. And so beautiful—my fucking god, I used to have these dreams—” He let out a harsh breath, which was when she realized that she had been holding hers. “I wish you had been my first. I wanted you to be.”
“Yes, well, your father took care of that, didn’t he?” The words came out before she could think better of it.
“Yeah, he did.” Nicholas reached around her to pick up his shirt, and she felt a wash of guilt when he glanced at her with regret rather than anger. “That was too bad. I would have waited for you. You could have shown me how to touch you.” A catch entered his voice. “I would have enjoyed that.”
Maybe she was more like her mother than she’d thought.
Jay side-stepped him, needing Nick-free air. The awful things he was saying were not nearly awful enough, and she was having trouble remembering why he could not be hers.
“You didn’t wait. You took.”
“I know.” He knotted the fabric of his shirt in his hands. “But Iamwaiting now.”
Jay stared at the peeling juice label. Her restless hands had nearly pried it free. She wanted to protest, to find the words that would make him realize that this was wrong, but while Nicholas’s father had never taken him anywhere near a church, it seemed he’d found another way to practice his zealotry on his knees. And god, if he had been patient, if he had come at her likethis, he might have been able to wear her reservations like a tide lapping away at stubborn granite.
“Think about that,” Nicholas said, with a knowing tilt of his head. “Deep down, you’re still that ruthless little Amazon looking for the one fight worth winning.”
Goddamn you, thought Jay, as he turned away.
Chapter Ten
???????
Usually, someone was chasing through the house—a man who wanted to hurt her, his face drenched in shadow, the familiar hallways warped like funhouse mirrors—but this time, she was trapped in the pool. There was some kind of party going on, like one of those Golden Age Hollywood bacchanals, and although people kept walking by, none of them could hear her screaming. None of them could see that the water was already frozen, and that beneath that score of big band jazz, her screams were fading as she drowned.
I’m all alone, she thought.I’m going to die down here.
And then someone grabbed her arm—
