Chapter NineThiago
I grabbed my phone and looked at my messages. Maggie wanted to meet for dinner the next day.
I can’t, I typed brusquely and hit send as Kam walked out of the bathroom looking lost and exhausted. It made me want to tuck her into my bed with me, and rub her back until she closed her eyes and fell asleep. But instead, I said, “The door’s over there,” annoyed by my own thoughts. It was bad enough, Taylor knowing I’d had a thing for Kam when we were little. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten that stupid letter. Not until it was actually in my hands did I remember what it had said.
“Can I just stay here awhile?” she asked. And I was concerned by what I saw in her. Not just weariness, not just drunkenness, but a sadness that made me wish I could hug her. I wanted to punch whoever had made her feel that way.
“Shouldn’t you go to Taylor’s room?” I asked, watching her walk around to the other side of the bed and collapse there. She was the same Kam as always, doing whatever she wanted, not caring about the consequences, not caring if she’d overstepped a line.
“Taylor hates me,” she said, folding her hands as if in prayer and tucking them under her left cheek. It was all I could do not to wrap my arms around her.
“He’ll get over it.” I said to calm her down, but part of me knew it was a lie. The fact that we had kissed as kids wasn’t going to sit well with my brother. We had squabbled over Kamila when we were younger. He’d get mad that I picked on her; I’d get jealous about that special something they shared.
“It’s not just him. Everyone hates me,” she said.
“No one hates you.”
“Yes, they do. I don’t know why, but it’s like I’ve got a contagious disease all of a sudden. And I don’t care, I swear I don’t. I was tired of having to keep up that image. But my friends just turning their backs on me…”
“If they turned their backs on you, they’re not your friends.”
She looked up at me, and I felt a throbbing in my groin. How did she do it? Those eyes, those lips… I couldn’t take it.
“I’m a bad person,” she confessed. And whatever heat I was feeling turned cold.
“Kam, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“What we did in your car…what I tried to do a few days ago…”
I ran it all through my head. Her standing before me, pulling me in and trying to kiss me. The throbbing sensation came back, and I was dying to take her right there. I looked at the ceiling to try to control myself. “You screwed up. Anyone can screw up.”
“If you were with me and I did that with your brother, would you still see it that way?”
“If you were with me, you’d never feel tempted to do something like that with anyone else,” I said without thinking. I didn’t want to think like that—Kami wanting me more than she did Taylor—because it probably wasn’t true. He was better for her, a better person, more fun, more attentive…more everything.
I felt her roll over until her body was right up against mine.
“Have you ever imagined being with me?”
I closed my eyes. Of course I had. Ever since our first kiss those thoughts had never stopped running through my head, not even after I grew up and started dating. Not even once I had a girlfriend. Kam had always been there. It was almost scary to me, the way I’d never been able to get her out of my mind.
“No,” I said.
She fell back on the pillow. Now we were both staring at the ceiling.
“I should go,” she said, sitting up. I couldn’t keep myself from grabbing her arm and holding her back.
“Of course I’ve imagined it, Kamila,” I admitted once our eyes had locked and she’d decided to stay there, torturing me like no one ever had before. Longing for something I couldn’t have was painful.
“So what’s it like, in your head?” She asked so gently it threw me off.
“I imagine us in this room.”
She gulped, and I wanted to run my tongue along her neck, feel her heart rate quicken. I wanted to slide my hand under her skirt and touch her until she was desperately screaming my name.
“Why here?” Her voice was low.
“Because we do it over and over, I never give you a break. I make love to you until you can’t anymore, and then, once you catch your breath, we go at it again.”
