Текст книги "Thick Love"

Автор книги: Eden Butler

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

The night progressed much the same way with me acting like a dick anytime I caught Richard and Blanchard with their heads together, nodding toward Aly as she moved around the lake house. I knew what kept their attention. She looked beautiful with her hair down her back, just brushing her waist and her strong, toned arms and legs on modest display in that fitted patterned sundress. That still didn’t mean they needed to ogle her and it didn’t explain why I kept doing a little ogling myself.

She moved around the room like she owned the world, not intimidated by all the boosters and their damn money or their shitty attitudes. Aly didn’t smile, but still had a friendly, soft grin on her face, one that drew the attention of others around her. She moved like no one could touch her, like just her swaying hips and the strong, confident gait told the world she knew who she was and no one could mess with that. Confidence goes a long way, and Aly was catching attention with hers. Me? I could not figure out why it made me mad that people were taking notice of her.

The lake house emptied a couple of hours later and when the head coach and his wife finally left and just my parents, Leann, Aly and I were left, we all seemed to breathe a little easier. At least, we could get out of our church clothes.

“Hope those bastards enjoyed that,” Dad said, coming behind my mother to rub her shoulders. “You should go sit down, Wildcat. We can take care of the cleanup.”

“I’d say to leave it but Aly’s head would explode,” she said, smiling at Aly when she took a handful of plates into the kitchen.

“Nope, we’ll get it.” Leann nodded for Mom to sit on the sofa. “Ransom will help, won’t you, little cousin?”

“You know,” I said, rolling up the sleeves of my dress shirt, “I liked you better when Tristian was around for you to bully.”

“Hush, I’m not that bad.” Leann turned my shoulders and gave me a push towards the kitchen, pointing to a stack of dirty dishes.

We cleaned the mess as my mother dictated from the sofa, rubbing her belly with her feet propped against the coffee table. She paused in her supervising to laugh at Leann dancing in the middle of the room after she turned the music up to something that would have had the boosters covering their ears and closing their wallets.

“Aren’t you almost forty, lady?” Mom asked Leann. “You shouldn’t be able to move like that.”

“Please, you don’t outgrow moves like these.”

That insane woman danced around the living room with a bag in her hand, shimming and shaking as she cleaned away the party mess and I rolled my eyes, heading back into the kitchen to deposit a stack of plates on the counter.

“I can do that, Aly, you don’t have to,” I said when I caught her unloading the dishwasher.

“It’s no big deal.” She moved to the music and I smiled. Leann had always done that too, most dancers did. It was something written into the genetic make-up, some weird instinctual coding that made them break out into a move, a twist, whatever compulsion it was that called to them. Aly did the same thing, I’d noticed, with or without music playing.

She did that just then in the kitchen with her hands on forks and knives, and her feet freed from the heels she had been wearing. I laughed at her when she twirled around that kitchen and laughed harder when I stepped back into the living for more plates, catching Leann doing some sort of weird twist with her hips that made me think she’d completely lost it.

“Work it!” Mom called, falling back against the sofa when Leann started twerking, moving faster the louder my mother laughed.

“Some things never change,” Dad said, stuffing trash into a bag when I headed back toward the kitchen.

“They were like this in college?”

He glanced at me, shaking his head. “They weren’t this bad in college.”

“Age gives you confidence, Hale,” Leann shouted.

My father loved bickering with Leann, said it was some residual throw back to their CPU days when Leann thought he wasn’t good enough for her sweet little cousin and Dad said and did shit just to piss her off. That certainly hadn’t changed in the years since then.

His laughter followed me into the kitchen, my arms weighed down with dirty champagne flutes, but then I caught sight of Aly and my mind went blank. She reached to the topmost cabinet with a cup in her hand, stretching, trying to get it onto the shelf. As she twisted up and lifted on the tip of her toes, that dress she wore caught on the countertop and rode up further than it should have, giving me a clear view of the curve of her naked ass.

It was firm, perfectly round and I tightened my grip on one of the flutes, hearing it splinter as Aly cursed low under her breath. Then it became apparent that my mind wasn’t the only thing I had no control over as my dick got twitchy the longer I stared at her.

Behind me, my father’s voice drifted, then completely stopped, but I didn’t hear him, was too caught by the sight of Aly’s bare, beautiful skin. My head moved forward and I nearly dropped the flutes when my father popped me in the back of the head, catching me in my creepy gawk and scaring the shit out of me.

Dad’s glare was enough to deflate my twitchy dick and I deposited the flutes in the sink, barely hearing my father offer to give Aly a hand.

Later Leann pulled Aly from the kitchen to dance with her, my parents laughing at them from the sofa and me staring from the open bar near the den. It made the memory of her bare ass and my knotted up emotions worse. I laughed right along with them at first as Leann moved her hips, tried like hell to match what we’d all seen in the Shakira video when she sang about her hips not lying, but she couldn’t quite manage that twist and shimmy. Aly could and set about showing my cousin how to move her hips in impossible angles.

“No, bend your knees more, cheri. Straighten one leg, then, boom…shimmy.”

Jesus did she. That short little dress moved, flashed against her thighs, perfect, smooth tawny skin teasing with every shake, but my eyes were transfixed, unmovable as Aly turned in a circle and her hips went up and down, up and down. Boom indeed. Boom went my heart as she moved, boom went that thud in my stomach, the one that told me I needed to get myself together and stop acting like a little punk about this girl.

She was hot. There, I admitted it, but that didn’t give me the right to stand around watching her like I couldn’t control myself.

Aly turned in a complete spin and those hips worked faster, the shimmy so mesmerizing my damn parents clapped and cheered her on. My eyes went a little dry because I didn’t blink, couldn’t.

Nope. I couldn’t control myself around her at all. So I disappeared to check on Koa as he slept, using the pretense of making sure the music hadn’t woken him to give me the space I clearly needed from Aly.

You’re so weak, that voice hummed and I swore it sounded smug.

“I damn well know it,” I said, brushing back the hair from my little brother’s face, wishing I could sleep as peacefully as he did.

Maybe it was all of that—me acting like a jealous asshole to my teammates, me drooling after Aly in the kitchen, seeing that evil seduction her hips worked in me while she danced—that all led to what happened next.

Maybe I was just a horny idiot incapable of any kind of self-control when I was around her.

Whatever it was, I somehow ended up leaving Koa’s room later than I’d wanted, finding the living room empty and Leann’s Cadillac missing from the driveway. I figured Aly had driven back to Metairie with her. Guessed that she thought I’d crashed and didn’t want to wake me before she left.

She’s not your girlfriend, dumbass. Why would she say goodbye?

“Damn,” I said to the empty room, leaning against the piano.

“Ransom?”

She stood in the kitchen doorway, her feet bare, wearing an old Kona Hale Fangirl t-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts I knew were my mom’s. “I thought you left,” I told her, feeling like an idiot for just gawking at her the way I did.

“Keira has an early doctor’s appointment in the morning. They’re worried about her feet swelling.” She walked toward me with her arms across her chest and that subtle brush of her hand up one arm had me realizing she wasn’t wearing a bra. “She asked me to stay the night since it was so late by the time we got everything cleaned up.”

Son of a bitch.

Nodding, I sat at the piano, trying like hell to block out the cluster of stupid that moved around my head. I wanted her to sit next to me. I wanted her to leave my house and never come back. I wanted to find out if she really went commando tonight or if she was wearing a thong.

I really wanted to not to care about any of that.

“You alright?” she asked me, coming closer toward the piano to rest her elbows against the lid. “You disappeared.”

My fingers went across the keys slowly as I played something soft. Rhiannon. A song Mom always sang with me when things got too much for me and I was too angry for anything to make sense. I wasn’t angry just then, but Aly being there, Aly just being Aly definitely had sense out of my reach.

“I’m good,” I said, coming to the chorus, keeping my gaze on my fingers.

“You’re good.” She sounded like she didn’t believe me.

“Yeah.” One glance at her frown and I looked back down at the keys.

Aly wasn’t the type to coddle you. She was nice enough, could be downright sweet—at least to Koa, and I got that it wasn’t in her nature to get you to open up when you pretended you just wanted to be left alone. She wasn’t going to drag anything out of me because she didn’t pry. But she also wasn’t the type of person that would handle much bullshit. It was one of the things I liked most about her.

You don’t like her, I told myself, thinking that if I said it enough, it might become true.

“Night, Ransom,” she said, through a breath and though I’d just been thinking about wanting her gone, right then I could only think about how badly I wanted her to stay.

“We could go over your song if you want.” I tried making my tone light, like I didn’t care either way if she left me alone or came and sat next to me on the piano. It was stupid and childish, but damn if attraction, a little bit of desire, doesn’t make us all act just like kids fumbling through their first crushes.

I could do smooth, had done it plenty in the past, but didn’t quite pull it off that night.

“I mean, I’m a little wired tonight and no one is here.”

She looked down the hallway where my parents and little brother slept as though checking to make sure we hadn’t woken anyone up.

“Won’t that bother them?” She moved closer, stretched her arm across the piano and I tried not to think about the silent chant in my head that urged her to sit next to me.

“No,” I said, still attempting and failing to sound ambivalent. “Mom used to stay up all night writing songs so she doesn’t bat an eye when I play late into the night and Koa has been hearing music and loud-mouthed people since he was born.” I smiled at her when she sat next to me. “I’m sure you’ve caught on to the fact that he sleeps through anything.”

“Alright.”

Popping and stretching my fingers, I started to play the tune she’d become familiar with. Keyboards worked better when teaching chords, the transitions easier to follow than when I played this song on the guitar. Weeks into practicing and Aly already knew the intro to “Wild Horses,” the perfect pause and release of when to sing. And, she had gotten so much better, was a fast study and already her tone was solid and that natural, the high pitch didn’t wobbled nearly as much as when we’d first started singing together.

It was that open, honest expression on her face, how she closed her eyes as though the lyrics, the melody were private, something she wanted to keep in her mind and behind the darkness of her close lids that had me slowing my fingers. She’d spun a web without even realizing it and had already caught me tight in that silky snare.

Her body put off a warmth I could feel on my arms as I played, and that scent, that delicious, strong smell from her skin, her hair, hit me when she brushed her shoulder free from those wavy tangles. When my fingers slowed even more and the slow progression made Aly miss the chorus, she opened her eyes and stared at me as though she didn’t know if I’d messed up or she’d done something wrong.

But she didn’t ask what had happened. Aly just stared back at me, because I’d stopped playing, because I’d created the awkward tension that started to fill up the room. I knew what she saw on my face. How could she not, but Aly couldn’t even take a compliment. No way she’d ask why I looked like I wanted to kiss her.

Instead, she looked down at the keys, brushing my hands aside to play. She was a stronger singer than a piano player and it took me a minute, one I spent staring at her profile, watching her hard focus on the keys before I left bench, coming to kneel behind her and move my arms so that my hands were under hers.

When she started to move her arms back, to move her hands, I leaned closer, taking in a deep breath. “Keep them there,” I said, trying not to groan at that scent I’d come to love so close to me. “I’ll show you the right tempo.”

There was a small shake in her arms that I tried to ignore. Her long, slender fingers rested lightly on top of mine, moving when mine did like I was some sort of puppeteer guiding her hands this way and that. But no one would pull Aly’s strings. In fact, if anyone was pantomiming it was me—acting as though the warmth of her skin, the smell of her hair and the sweet, lulling sound of her voice wasn’t affecting me.

“It’s a rhythm you keep. Not just the notes. It’s got to be deep, Aly. So deep that it feels like a heartbeat.”

We continued to play, her humming under the notes, giving up the pretense that she wanted to practice and I didn’t comment, didn’t point out that she wasn’t singing. Instead I shifted, moved closer so that my chin was on top of her head. I couldn’t help but notice how perfectly she fit under me, how the bend of her body filled the arc of mine.

“Heartbeat,” I said again when she began to follow my fingers on the other end of the piano.

“Like sex again?” she said, grinning as she glanced at me.

“No, not like sex.” I looked down at her hoping that the grin would grow. “Like…like love.”

“Oh,” she said, moving her hands into her lap.

“Why’d you stop?”

“That’s why I can’t play it right.” I didn’t move my hands from the keyboard and she didn’t ask me to. Aly shrugged, her usual unconscious movement and wouldn’t look me directly in the eyes. “I…I don’t know love.”

“Everyone has been loved, Aly,” I said, not wanting to test the waters quite that much.

“Not everyone, Ransom.”

My chest ached a bit then and I wasn’t sure if I felt sorry for her or pissed off at any family that wouldn’t love a girl like her. She was smart and strong and beautiful, and so damn determined. What parent wouldn’t love her? Be proud of her?

But I pushed back that anger and moved one of her hands back over mine. “Come on, slacker,” I nudged her free hand, “No rest for the wicked.” She followed my lead, her arms less rigid, like she was becoming comfortable being so close to me. “It’s not just being in love that counts. That heartbeat comes from the people who love us. The people who are important to us. Being in love is just a bonus to all that.”

“Not sure if I want that bonus,” Aly said turning to face me when I stopped playing. She had an eyelash underneath her left eye and I brushed it away, noticing that tonight her breath smelled like strawberries.

“You don’t want to be in love?” I held my breath, not really sure why I did. Aly shook her head, but didn’t speak. “That’s too bad.”

“Why? Is the sex better or something when you’re in love?”

God, she had no idea, but I wasn’t about to talk about that or how deeply I’d fallen at sixteen or why I’d suddenly felt that tattoo burning on my chest. She would hate me then, and I wouldn’t get such a close view of the small shine on her bottom lip or the smattering of goose bumps that covered her arms and ran up her neck.

“It’s a lot better when you’re in love.”

“Guess I’ll never know,” she said, leaning into me when I brushed my face against her shoulder, inhaling that exotic scent.

“Guess…” I moved closer, something about those lips, the small peek of her pink tongue drawing me closer, wanting to take, wanting to keep taking. “Guess not.”

She was inches from me and I took my hands away from her arms and slid my fingers into all that thick, wavy hair, closing my eyes when I gripped several strands between my fingers. I was going to kiss her, take again something too good, too perfect for me, but just as I grazed my lips over hers, before I could apply any pressure at all, a loud groan came from my parents’ bedroom, followed immediately by the sound of my father shouting over and over “Fuck, Wildcat! Fuck!”

“Son of a bitch,” I said, laughing right along with Aly when the noisy scream hit our ears. “God,” I said, resting my forehead on Aly’s shoulder before I stood. “They’re worse than teenagers.”

“Oh I’m aware,” she said, standing off the bench.

“You’ve heard them?” She nodded. “Do they know?”

“They don’t even try to hide it when they come out of the room and realize I showed up early or Koa and I didn’t spend enough time at the park.” Aly waved off my wrinkled nose, still laughing. “You can’t blame them.”

“Uh, yeah, I can.”

She leaned against the piano, shrugging again. “Keira is still young, so is Kona and they’re stupid for each other and they’ve got a lot of years to catch up on. Besides,” she moved away from the piano and crossed her arms again as though she just remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra, “if I had a man who looked like your dad, I’d keep him in the bedroom.”

It wasn’t something I hadn’t heard before. Women, no matter their age, went a little fangirl over my father. “Typical,” I told her. “But you know,” I said, resting my elbows on the piano. “I look just like him and I’m younger, have more energy.”

Aly shook her head, like she thought I was a little pathetic. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

And when she walked down the hallway, leaving me alone, I couldn’t help having the smallest hope that she’d remember the heartbeat and that one day she wouldn’t laugh when I told her what I could give her. What I thought I wanted to give her, not some dancer, not some faceless woman. Just Aly.

9

I’d done this a thousand times and not once had I been able to leave my car. One thousand and one and I sat still, hands gripping my steering wheel as I watched the family on the porch.

They couldn’t see me, not from the heavy cover of the oak trees and wisteria vines brushing against the street. It was a spot I remembered well, one I’d used so often I was surprised there weren’t grooves in the pavement from my tires. I hid here in the past waiting for Emily to shimmy down the back balcony and hop in my Mustang.

We’d been a little desperate, too caught up in what our hormones and all that stupid emotion did to us. She’d risked being caught, being forced into a pointless, fake infatuation with a guy she’d never love, just to throw off her father. I’d park in this very same spot, hidden beneath that leafy cover sometimes all night. Sometimes for just long enough to touch her, make her come, kiss her soundly enough that Parker wouldn’t even register when she was around him.

But Emily wouldn’t come today. She wouldn’t wait until her father had downed his third bourbon and passed out on the sofa before she’d move down the ivy-weaved lattice. She wouldn’t keep to the edge of the fence line to avoid the motion detector lights.

Emily wouldn’t leave that house again. Not for me.

Maybe it was being around Aly, feeling things I thought would never come to me again, wanting something I knew I couldn’t have, that had led me back to St. Charles watching Emily’s mother and little brother sit on the swing, swaying front to back. I wondered what they talked about, if maybe the turning temperatures would remind them that her birthday loomed. I wondered how often they cursed my name, hated me for everything I hadn’t been able to do for her.

I still didn’t have the strength to tell them how sorry I was.

One thousand and one times, just like the others and I still couldn’t say it so I drove through that thick brush of limbs and leaves and sped away from that large house and the people on the swing. I was late for another practice in Metairie and this time, when I thought about exerting myself in that dance, I didn’t dread it.

You should. You should dread ever seeing her. She’s too good for you.

Aly was too good for me, I knew that, but that knowledge didn’t ease my foot off the gas. Even though I knew how careless it was, even though I knew I could easily let Aly make me forget that I shouldn’t want to be around her, I still drove down the interstate, foot lowering again and again until I left the city behind and found myself at my cousin’s studio.

I probably looked a little obvious, just too damn anxious. My clean polo wasn’t wrinkled, my jeans weren’t faded. Hell, I had even shaved and was wearing my new, black Chucks. Aly would know that I gave a shit about how looked as soon as I walked through the door.

A little worried that I looked like I was trying too hard, I untucked my shirt and pulled a flat brim ball cap from my backseat to hide all the gel in my hair, all the extra time I’d taken to not look like a bum.

Damn, that girl did something to me. Just being around her, helping her out, made me feel less guilty about my past, made that weight of shame feel less heavy. And when I was around her, distracted by her smell, the almost smile she gave me, I didn’t hear that grating voice telling me I was unworthy.

She silenced the noise and I wanted to know why.

Even that unknown dancer, who had worked some kind of sweet juju on my body, hadn’t silenced that voice completely. Not like Aly did. That thought alone had me thinking I’d call Ironside and cancel the performance. Why see a faceless woman who probably only cared about the cash when I could get the same release from Aly without even touching her? Besides, I wanted Aly more. As surprising as that realization had been to me when it hit me, it was true.

Even being at the studio, a place I knew she’d be, made my head quiet, kept that voice mute. I walked inside, frowning at the empty classroom, the lack of student noise and followed the only sound I heard: Aly’s laughter.

She was talking to someone I couldn’t see, but the second voice was lower, didn’t sound as clear and I stopped outside of Leann’s office to listen, noticing the screen in front of Aly showed an open Skype window and the smiling face of some jackass I didn’t know looking at Aly like he wanted a bite of her. He wasn’t even wearing a shirt, putting all that stupid kanji art work on his shoulder and down his chest on display.

“I can’t wait, gorgeous,” he told Aly. The guy was, I guess what girls would think was good looking. I wasn’t sure, looked a little too much like a pretty boy to me. I remembered seeing him around Leann’s studio a few months back when my cousin hosted some sort of mini-camp. Guy acted like he was the shit.

Whatever he was, Aly seemed to like him. Go figure.

“I’ve missed you,” that jackass told Aly, leaning toward his webcam with a smirk on his face that made him look like a punk. “I’ve missed you a lot, gorgeous.”

“Wi, cheri, I bet you have.”

I didn’t want to listen. It made sense to me when I really thought about it. They had a lot in common, they both were decent dancers, they both enjoyed that shit a hell of a lot more than I did. And Aly was sweet, beautiful when she wasn’t putting off that “back off” vibe.

Of course she’d be into someone like him.

She’s not for you, that voice whispered as I walked out of the studio and I let that feeling seep into my skull, hating that I didn’t fight back, feeling like a coward when I let it run its mouth over and over. So much for Aly quieting that voice. You don’t deserve her.

“No shit,” I said, climbing into my car with no thoughts about practicing. I couldn’t do it. It was stupid. Aly didn’t need me. She had that asshole to hold her, dance around the studio like they were fucking with their clothes on.

She doesn’t want you.

“Yeah, I got that.”

When the voice’s whisper grew louder, that tone bit harder, I cranked up my stereo, letting that thudding bass drown out any thoughts beyond my foot on the gas as I moved down the interstate. I didn’t want to think about Aly or that punk she flirted with on Leann’s PC. And when my cell chirped with a text from her, I didn’t reply. I wouldn’t.

I stopped at the red light once I took the exit, my head bobbing to old school Mystikal telling folks to shake their asses, and stared at her text for the entire circulation of the light.

You’re late, slacker!

Even over a text she managed to be bossy and funny at the same time, a fact that pissed me off. I was going to toss my cell on the empty seat next to me, but deleted her message and pulled up Ironside’s last text to send him a new one. My single focus was on keeping Aly out of my head.

Am I still getting my performance? I texted, holding my breath a little until he replied, not caring that the voice kept nagging me, not caring that it felt almost wrong to want the unknown dancer now. It felt like I was somehow stepping out on Aly. That made no damn sense.

And then, when his reply came, I decided I didn’t care about what seemed right or what made sense to me.

Yeah, man. No problem.

My breath came out easy, relieved even though my chest felt tight, even though that voice in my head kept silent.