Текст книги "When the Stars Align"

Автор книги: Jeanette Grey

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“Has she ever?” Carol asked, and at least she had the grace to sound sympathetic.

“Not so far.” He sucked down the rest of his beer in a few long pulls.

“Then what’s so complicated about it?”

He blinked as his gaze darted over to the side, uncertain which surprised him more—the fact that Jo was actually talking or the content of what she’d said. “Excuse me?”

She looked around, taking in the renewed attention being directed her way and visibly stiffening. Her shrug was all casual disaffectedness, but it wasn’t particularly convincing. “I don’t know, dude. Kinda sounds like she’s just not that into you.”

She grimaced, maybe at the gratuitous pop culture reference, or maybe at something else. He didn’t have a lot of space to concentrate on it, because his heart squeezed at the very idea. “It’s—” he started, but his automatic descriptor of “complicated” wasn’t going to help him here, now was it? Not when that was what had started the whole conversation. “We… she…” Swallowing, he looked at the empty bottle in his hands, and then at all the people staring at him expectantly. And back to Jo. “We’re… on a break. She said she needed some space.”

“Ouch,” Jared said.

Yeah, pretty much.

Jo’s mouth twisted down. “Not sure how that exactly contradicts my theory.”

How was he supposed to explain this? Everyone in the program had slowly been trading life stories and histories, but he’d shied away from this very subject time and time again, because it was complicated, as cliché as that might sound. “We’ve been together, sort of, since freshman year. I mean, it’s been on again, off again.”

There’d been the intense whirlwind his first week of classes, when they’d met in a seminar they’d both needed for their gen-eds, and she’d just sort of carved out this space for herself in his life. She’d been easy to talk to, and a beautiful blonde, and just different from anyone he’d ever met. Way different from anyone who’d ever given him the time of day before. Then again, that could’ve had something to do with the fact that he’d gotten contact lenses and started working out between high school graduation and the start of college.

She’d accepted his closet nerdiness with only a modicum of teasing and introduced him to the girls in the sorority she was pledging, and sure, they’d had different majors and hobbies and schedules. They’d conflicted on those here and there, and she’d thrown her hands up at him a couple of times when he’d insisted he had too much work to do to go along with whatever plans she’d made. But the breaks had been good for them both.

Three years of falling back into each others’ arms and beds and then slipping into the same patterns of her getting caught up in her things and him in his. He hadn’t even really been surprised this time when she’d said that maybe they should take advantage of the ocean between them for the summer.

He had been disappointed, though.

“But it’s really great when it’s great,” he said, half trying to convince them and half reminding himself. “She’s fun, and she makes me do things I never would.” He still didn’t really care for clubbing, but he’d met so many interesting people because of her, and thumping beats and close dancing usually led to some of their better nights once they made it to his place. “And she listens to me, even when it’s mostly boring science stuff. She’s faithful.” He looked away, out the window, into the distance. “And it’s been three years, you know? We both knew we were going to be busy this summer, and the distance is a killer, so she… so we…”

He stopped to listen to himself, and the squeezing in his chest got a whole lot tighter.

“Anyway, it’s fine. We’ve texted back and forth. And I’ll see her in a few weeks.”

“You will?” Jared asked.

“Yeah, there’s this conference in Baltimore I have to go to to present a poster. She’s driving down from Philly. We’ve got it all planned out.”

It was an overstatement, but it wasn’t too far from the truth. She’d said she’d make it work. He’d budgeted an extra couple of days between the conference and his flight, and everything that was wrong with them—these silences and this distance—they’d figure them out. When they were actually near each other, they always did. They’d manage it this time, too.

“It’ll be great,” he said. But it sounded weak.

“If you say so.” Jo gave another little expression of indifference, this one just as unconvincing as the last.

Only he didn’t understand the lines around her mouth this time. It couldn’t just be that she was talking in front of the group or garnering unwanted attention. Delicate, shy flower that she was.

“Just . . .” she started again, hesitating for a second. But then her gaze met his, and there was no less challenge there. “When someone doesn’t respond to you, it usually means something. Believe me.” She let out a harsh little laugh that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his stomach sink. “I have a lifetime of waiting for somebody to pay attention to me under my belt, and it doesn’t matter what you do. If they don’t want to, they’re not going to.” Glancing away, she said, “Better to cut your losses before they really break your heart.”

And he… really didn’t know what she was talking about, but it got under his skin. “Not how I operate.”

“Clearly.” She rolled her eyes, and it just bothered him that she could be so flippant when this had secretly been eating at him for so long. “Just don’t expect sympathy when she disappoints you.”

That was it. Something inside him snapped, because for every moment he’d been telling himself it would all be fine, he’d also been thinking that very same thing. This was bound to end badly, and he would deserve whatever he got for leaving himself so open. For clinging to something that was obviously past its prime.

He didn’t need to hear it from anyone else.

He was on his feet before he’d fully decided to move, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Jo’s eyes widened, but other than that she didn’t flinch, and he wanted to do to her what she’d done to him—what she’d been doing since the very first second they’d met. Flipping him and flipping his conception of his relationships and himself. He wanted her to feel what it was like to land that hard on the ground.

Only, from the set of her mouth, he had a feeling she already did.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself, needed to get in some kind of last shot. It came out tepid at best, his throat going wobbly at the last second. “Christ, you’re just fucking heartless, aren’t you?”

That got a reaction out of her, even if she looked more angry than indignant. “Don’t you dare tell me a thing about my heart.”

“Then don’t you tell me anything about mine.”

A low whistle sounded out from somewhere in the room. Their surroundings seeped back into his awareness, and his ears rang, his face flashing suddenly hot. For a minute there, it had felt like it was just the two of them. They were still the whole width of the room apart, but it had felt like nothing at all. Like he could have reached out, could have taken hold of her and shaken her. Or slammed her up against a wall and kissed her.

Apparently registering the eyes on them, too, she set her empty plate aside and squared her jaw. He half expected her to go storming off the way she was so fond of doing, but then it occurred to him. This was her house. He was the interloper—for all that she seemed the one so intent on trying not to belong.

“Adam?” Carol asked, but he shook his head.

“Excuse me,” he said.

He let the door slam shut behind him, striding across the space between the two houses and staring up in frustration at the setting ball of the sun in the sky. He kicked the gravel and tugged at his hair, and none of it did any good. Nothing ever did any good.

From his pocket, his phone gave a little beep, and he pulled it out with a prayer. Please prove me wrong. Please prove them all wrong.

It was only his brother, though. Of course it was. He tilted the thing on its side to type a reply, only it slipped from his grip, his hands unsteady, and anyway, the keys were so fucking small. He was always smashing them together and making these unholy amalgamations of words, and why couldn’t anyone ever use the stupid thing to actually talk anymore?

Miles and miles from home, that was all he wanted. Just a voice in his ear.

His phone seemed to taunt him as he picked it up, and it wasn’t the damn thing’s fault. He could call anyone he wanted—any of a dozen people who would actually pick up. But not the one person he wanted to.

In a brief second of clarity, he knew it wouldn’t change, and torturing himself like this was idiotic. Masochistic.

And that brief second was all it took.

In a burst, he unleashed all the strength he usually kept coiled so tight, and it felt good to just let it go.

He came back to himself with that intense kind of instant regret that only followed particularly stupid moves. But there were some things you couldn’t take back.

Cursing silently under his breath, he crouched and dropped his face into his hands. The shattered pieces of his phone glittered brightly against the gravel, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. He dropped his ass to the ground and spread his legs out, shaking his head against the combined impulses.

He had insurance on the stupid thing. He’d get a ride into town as soon as he could, and he’d say he dropped it. From the top of the telescope apparently, but still. Just a fall. Not him spending all his useless anger in hurling his best connection to the rest of the world.

Not him leaving himself really and truly alone.

Chapter Five

It was a tribute to just how loudly Adam’s mom could scream that he could hear it even over e-mail. He winced as he scanned over the message again, then clicked REPLY with a mental hand held protectively over his balls.

Yes, he should be more careful with his possessions, and yes, he needed to get someone to take him into civilization to get his phone replaced, and yes, it had been four days, but seriously? It wasn’t as if there weren’t any other ways to get in touch with him, and he was at other people’s mercy here without his own ride. He’d already asked Lisa and P.J. and Roberto, so what more could he do?

Except, yeah, maybe remind one of them that they’d said they’d be happy to, any time.

Four days without his phone, and it had been… nice, actually. The constant itch to check the damn thing had persisted at first, but it kept getting easier and easier to ignore. He didn’t have to think about the calls he wasn’t getting or the texts that never arrived. He was exchanging actual¸ honest-to-goodness e-mails for the first time in years, most of them more than two sentences long, and from people he cared about, too. His parents and his brothers and a few of his friends from college. All it had taken was the message from him, letting everyone know he was without a phone for a little bit. All it had taken was him reaching out.

And the people who didn’t take advantage of the opportunity? Well, nothing he could do about that. Right?

He worried the inside of his cheek between his teeth and put the thought out of his mind. He finished the reply to his mom, assuring her he wasn’t dying of dysentery out in the middle of the jungle or anything, and hit SEND, then minimized the window to get back to his work.

He was just digging into the numbers Lisa had left for him to crunch when the lady herself wandered in, her research partner, Heather, on her heels. Heather, who was also Jo’s advisor. Great. After giving them each a quick wave, he observed general office-sharing protocol and buried his gaze in his screen. But before he could get too involved, Heather laughed and said, “At least your student leaves your office from time to time.”

His ears perked up, but he tried to ignore it.

“Yours one of the obsessive ones?” Lisa asked.

Jo? Obsessive? Ha.

“She’s fine. But it’s more work coming up with enough for her to do to keep her happy than I’d been counting on.” Heather’s voice had a shrug to it. “Anyway, she’s got her first observing run tomorrow night. Hopefully she’ll get some good stuff.”

“Oh, right! I was going to ask you if Adam shouldn’t sit in on that with her. The objects you’re looking at might overlap with some of the ones we’re investigating.”

At the sound of his name, Adam put off any pretense at obliviousness. He tugged his headphones off and twisted around in his seat. “I thought I wasn’t going to get to use her until next week.”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Lisa mused, cocking an eyebrow.

Heather held up one hand. “It’s fine by me. It’s my research assistant you’ll have to talk to about it.”

Adam’s stomach sank, and he couldn’t quite suppress his frown. “Oh.”

He’d barely seen Jo since the other night. She hadn’t been coming to meals with the rest of them, and he hadn’t been sitting out between their houses in the dark, waiting to catch a glimpse of her against the backdrop of the stars. The slow burn of hunger he got thinking about her hadn’t faded, but it was all twisted together with what she’d said about him. About him and Shannon. He didn’t know which way was up anymore, or how Jo got to him so much.

And now he had to ask her for a favor.

“Don’t look too excited,” Heather said, her tone amused.

Shit. He blanked his expression the best he could. This was personal, not professional, and he wasn’t going to let whatever was going on between him and Jo mess anything up. “No. I’ll… I’ll ask her.”

“You can’t be too intimidated by people like that. I promise you, her bark is worse than her bite.”

“I’m not intimidated.” He wasn’t. Not exactly. It was more complicated than that, the push-pull of want and anger, and the way she took him apart with her words and forced these awful statements out of him. The way she wormed her way into the thoughts he had when he was alone, in the dark, with the door closed, imagining her on top of him and under him and pressed against him… Heather and Lisa were both looking at him skeptically, and he leveled them with a glare, insisting, “I’m not.”

“If you say so,” Lisa said with a smirk. “Just ask her before tomorrow.”

“Sure.” He’d… get right on that.

Swiveling around in his chair again, ignoring the tittering he knew full well was going on behind his back, he focused on his computer screen.

He’d ask Jo. Have a civil, professional conversation with her—one where neither of them aimed for the jugular. One where neither of them ended up, physically or metaphorically, laid out flat on their backs, with their throats exposed.

He ducked his head. He just had to see to every single other item on his to-do list first.

He checked his e-mail one last time, then closed the window. He’d finished everything he had to for the day, and while there were a couple of items on his list he could get a jump on for tomorrow, even he could admit he was stalling.

Stop being such a fucking coward.

He put the computer to sleep for the night and rolled his chair out from under the desk, standing and stretching his arms overhead. Lisa was long gone for the evening—almost everyone was. If it were anybody but Jo, he’d worry she might’ve left by this point, too, but there was no way he’d be that lucky.

Turning off the light, he checked his pocket for his keys, ignoring the empty spot where his phone should be, then closed the door and headed down the hall. Scientists were a weird bunch, and even at half past eight, there were a few lights on in offices up and down the corridor. He nodded at anyone who happened to look up as he passed, but no one tried to stop him or draw him into a conversation.

Just outside the door to Jo and Heather’s office, he paused. Jo was sitting there, giant headphones over her ears, attention focused intently on the screen in front of her. No sign of Heather, of course, and that was good. He didn’t need her listening in or offering commentary the way she had that afternoon.

And… he could always put this off. Could come back tomorrow. He didn’t actually have to ask Jo about this until then.

No. Yes. No.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he balled his fingers into his fist and knocked.

Jo startled hard, her gaze jerking up, eyes wide with surprise, and for a second he imagined he saw a softness to her mouth. But if it’d been there at all, it was gone in an instant, replaced with the same hard-set jaw he was so accustomed to by now. The same veiled expression of contempt.

He took a deep breath and managed a smile. “Hi.”

“What do you want?”

His smile faltered. Any thoughts of easing her in with small talk vanished, and he crossed his arms over his chest, as if a defensive posture could actually ward off whatever she might throw at him. “You’re using the telescope tomorrow night.”

“Yep.”

“And our advisors work together.” He paused, but the jut of her chin said she was waiting for him to tell her something she didn’t know. Right. Just get to the point already. “Lisa thinks some of the objects you’re looking at might be relevant to what I’m doing, too, and she wants me to sit in.”

“Sit in?” She visibly bristled, and aw crap, that was her dander getting up already.

“She didn’t really specify what she wanted me to do.” He resisted the urge to mop his brow or fidget. “Look, I don’t want to get in your way. But this is about work. I’ll have some more specifics tomorrow, but this is your experiment. Your show. I’m pretty sure I’d just be an observer, seeing what you’re doing and getting a peek at the data as it comes in.” He took a deep breath. “If you’re okay with it.”

That seemed to relax her a little, his granting her the power to turn him down. She gave him a long, appraising look, like she was judging him. And there was always something about the way her eyes lingered when she regarded him like this. Something that fueled his thoughts of her, his sense of heat when his skin felt cold and untouched.

She snapped her gaze to meet his, and he squared his shoulders.

“You come tomorrow night, you’re quiet. I’m working and I don’t need any bullshit interruptions.”

“You’ll hardly even know I’m there.”

“You don’t touch the computer or the sensors.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“Unless I tell you to do something, in which case you do.”

“Not a problem.”

For what might have been the first time ever, the corner of her mouth twitched up, making the ring through her lip glint and sending an odd little spark up his spine. “Then I’ll see you at twenty-two hundred, soldier.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned at her for real this time, and it felt like ice cracking when she didn’t do anything to make him frown.

Better not press his luck.

With a quick nod, he turned and headed off, striding all the way to the corner, well beyond her sight before letting his posture slip. He pushed his hair off his brow and shook his head at himself as he laughed with relief. He was going to get to use the telescope a full week early, and sure it was in a limited capacity, but it was still a good thing. A positive development.

The personal development felt even better, though. He’d said what he needed to say, and when Jo had shoved, he’d stood his ground, but he hadn’t pushed back. He’d let her have and keep the upper hand. As a result, she’d given him exactly what he’d asked for. Maybe that should bother the male in him, but it didn’t. Not hardly at all.

He pushed through the doors and out into the wet night air. It’d been a while since he’d made the trip to the house alone in the dark or since he’d done so without an anxious itch under his skin.

Because the prickle at his neck and in his abdomen wasn’t anxiety. It wasn’t that at all.

He swept past the guard station and up the hill, along the gravel path and over to the house. The lights were blazing at the girls’ place, while the ones in his were dark, and for a second he wavered, wondering if he should go say hello.

It wasn’t a difficult decision to make, in the end.

He let himself in and retreated to his room, closing and locking the door behind himself before flopping down on his bed and closing his eyes. A guy needed to be alone sometimes, and the past few days had been building and building toward this.

Rubbing his palm over the bulge in his shorts, he gave out a low sigh. It had been so difficult to let himself do this lately. He couldn’t think of Shannon without getting angry and he didn’t want to think about Jo. Had a hard time summoning up any of the other lifeless, expressionless celebrities and fantasies that had gotten him through in lean times before.

But today Jo had smiled at him. Jo had stripped him down with words and demanded his compliance, and then she’d looked at him as if he’d been worth her time.

She’d looked at him with intent. And there had been that one night, when they’d convinced her to come to dinner, when she’d walked right into him and put her hand against his abdomen and stared up at him, and he’d let himself touch her side.

With a barely suppressed groan, he opened his fly and pulled himself out. He was hard and leaking, and the first rough stroke over bare flesh had him pushing up into the circle of his fist. It had been days, days spent adrift and cut off and unsure, and this wasn’t going to take much time at all.

Because it could have all gone differently today. He could have gone to Jo, and she could’ve been difficult, and he could’ve bitten back. She could’ve risen to meet him and jabbed her finger at his chest, and he could’ve grabbed her wrist.

They’d have been so close, the space between them shooting sparks, his body hard and hers bristling. Until the tension finally snapped.

He muffled his own groan, slickness spilling from his tip.

Her mouth would be hot, the piercing an edge against his tongue, and he’d push her against the wall and get just enough of her clothes off. Touch the curves of her breasts and splay his hand across the ink he still hadn’t fully glimpsed but that he hoped sprawled the length of her spine.

Sink into her while she wrapped her legs around his hips.

He tugged at his balls with his free hand, arching his neck as he sped his strokes.

Her head would knock back against the wall, her hands scrabbling hard at his shoulders as he fucked into that tight, wet warmth. He’d shut her up with his mouth and with his cock, bring her to the edge over and over until she was begging, saying his name.

Except. Oh, wait, this was even better. He squeezed himself hard around the base, holding off his pleasure.

Because maybe she wouldn’t want to be pressed up against a wall. Maybe she’d want to be in control, be on top, and, God, she’d look good over him. Shirt off and tits bouncing. She’d lay him out on the floor of her office and ride him hard and fast. He’d grasp her around her hips, dig his fingers in until that pale skin bruised. She’d feel so good, and he’d get a thumb on her clit, rub her nice and fast, punishing really, because she’d like that—she’d love that. She’d sink her teeth into his throat as she came, and she’d squeeze him.

He pumped his fist over himself again, giving in to it this time, imagining her slamming herself down onto him even after she was done, little overwhelmed pants and whines falling from her lips until he thrust up hard and filled her and—

His vision whited out, his whole body bowing with the force of it, toes curling and jaw aching with the effort it took to keep silent in the darkness. Two more slow, careful pumps to milk the rest of it out of him and he let go, still pulsing weakly against his abdomen as he went limp.

He felt wrung out and suddenly exhausted. The stirring under his skin was sated, but there was a new kind of restlessness seeping in.

Because a fantasy of sex was easy enough to conjure, but there was no ending to the story. No way they picked themselves up off the floor or spoke to each other the next day.

Hell, he’d all but been forbidden from speaking to her tomorrow.

He swept his clean hand over his brow and grimaced at the other one with not a little bit of belated disgust. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He wanted her. Obviously, he wanted her.

But there were a lot of things he wanted. And very few of them were things he ever got to keep.

It was another one of those lessons Jo had learned from her father: never, ever admit you’re wrong.

She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and tongued at the ring there. Darted her gaze from the streams of data coming in from the telescope, toward the sight of Heather and Adam both sitting there beside her.

The sad fact, the one she’d only admit to herself, was that she’d been wrong about a lot of things this summer already. She’d packed the wrong clothes, completely underestimating how oppressively hot it was going to be. She’d assumed the wrong things about who P.J. Galloway was and why she’d assigned her to Heather in the first place. Assumed all the wrong things about what kind of advisor Heather would turn out to be.

And Adam. The big, gorgeous guy who didn’t respect her boundaries, and who’d gotten here on account of his professor’s connections, and who was uselessly mooning over an ex-girlfriend who clearly didn’t care as much about him as he did about her. She’d pegged him for the kind of asshole guys like him usually turned out to be. As an idiot riding other people’s coattails. As a cuckolded wimp. And he wasn’t any of those things.

Already tonight he’d defied her expectations, keeping quiet when the silence in the observatory was even starting to get to her. Interjecting only to point out an issue with some of the calibrations they’d performed when they’d been getting started. Working steadily on a notebook full of calculations she begrudgingly admitted looked pretty freaking complicated.

Coming to her and asking if he could sit in on her telescope time instead of just running ramshackle over it and barging his way in.

And nobody—absolutely nobody—should look good in a hoodie and running shorts, under awful fluorescent lighting, in the middle of the night. But goddammit all, he did.

Silly her, worrying he’d distract her by trying to make small talk all night. Turned out the biggest distraction was just his stupid, perfect face.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she turned back to her monitor. The next star they wanted to look at was just starting to rise, so she input the new coordinates. Heather pretended not to pay too much attention to what Jo was doing, but she wasn’t very good at it. Only after the telescope had swept out to the correct patch of sky did she let out a breath and rise, taking her tablet with her.

“All right, kiddos. Looks like you’ve got this in hand, so I’m going to take off for a bit.” Translation: time for a quick nap on the couch in her office.

It was a heady thing, being trusted to run this baby all by herself. Sure, there were a couple of operators there to call upon if anything really bad happened, and Heather would be right upstairs, but still. Jo was really in charge now.

“Okay.”

Heather headed off, leaving Jo and Adam by themselves. Jo tapped her booted foot against the linoleum, her throat suddenly tight. Adam was sitting a respectful three or four feet to the side—close enough to see the monitors but far enough away that he wasn’t encroaching on her space or her experiment. It suddenly felt like he was sitting right on top of her, though, her skin buzzing and pulse humming with the promise of proximity. The possibility of contact.

She looked over at him, meeting bright blue eyes, and for the longest moment, their gazes held. Heat bloomed up and down her spine, because there was something about his stare. Something that made her think he was really seeing her.

Except then he seemed to remember himself and tore his gaze away, directing it outward, toward the window.

The room suddenly felt even more silent than it had a minute before.

She’d brought a bunch of articles with her, but it was after midnight, and the idea of really concentrating on the text made her temples hurt. She dared another glance over at him, and then another, and she bit her lip. She wasn’t going to break. He was the one who was supposed to give in and fill the quiet, not her. That was how it always went. For once, she actually wanted him to, and the fact that he didn’t made her skin itch.

Who the hell was she kidding?

“What are you working on?” she asked, pushing her papers and any pretense at disinterest away.

He arched a brow. “I’m sorry. I thought I wasn’t supposed to be distracting you with small talk?”

Mock-glaring at him, she waved her hand. “It’s more of a no speaking unless spoken to kind of thing.”

“Oh.” His smile got awfully smirky, but there wasn’t any malice to his tone. “In that case”—he shrugged, looking up—“it’s just some background calculations for my project.”

“Yeah?”

He licked his lips, distracting her from his eyes with the soft pout of his mouth. She wondered how it would yield beneath her teeth. How his equations would taste on her tongue.

“Jo?”

She blinked, refocusing. His voice had that quirk to it, like he was saying her name for the second time. Like she was the one who hadn’t been paying attention. “Hmm?”

He tapped his pencil against the paper and pushed it closer so she could see. “Did you want me to take you through it?”

“Um. Sure.”

He scooted a few inches closer. After a quick glance at the monitor, she did the same.

His voice got softer as he ran through the lines of letters and symbols scrawled out across the page. It wasn’t difficult to follow, and half of it she’d seen before, if not quite in the same configuration, but he explained it nicely, answering the couple of questions she interrupted with.

At the end, he frowned. “It’s not quite working out right, but I think I’m pretty close.”

She traced his calculations back a handful of steps, leaning in even closer. She paused in her scanning and tugged at the corner of the notebook, then without thinking, reached over and grabbed his pencil out of his hand, brushing his skin as she did.

“You dropped this term,” she said, circling it, then looking at him.