First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (10 page)

“Hey, whatcha readin’?” said the most annoying voice ever.

I looked up with a jolt.
Darla
. Darla the groupie who slept with
all
the guys.

“Books,” I said, biting back a nasty response of
have you heard of them?
She wasn’t stupid, I could tell. A little coarse and rough around the edges but Cambridge, and Boston, would refine her—it always did. I’d seen plenty of girls like her come through my college, and they had come in ready to take on the city and then the city took them on.

New England is different from other parts of the country—there’s a coldness to people, a reserve that just seems normal if you’re raised here, but when you spread your wings a little and travel around, you realize that everyone else thinks we’re just a bunch of uptight Massholes. Darla had that wild, loose, overly friendly manner that would make an old Yankee cringe and stare her down.

So I did.

“I know you’re reading books, silly,” she said, her voice going a bit hard. “I meant
what
book are you reading?”

Without waiting for the answer, Darla leaned over and read the title page. “Maya Banks? Who’s that?”

“She writes romance novels.”

“Like
Her Highlander’s Heinie
?”

What?
I thought. “No, I don’t read
that
kind of romance novel.”

“What kind do you read?”

“It’s more
Fifty Shades
.”

“You’re into bondage.” Darla nudged me with her elbow and said it in that robotic text-to-speech voice

Something inside me tightened and snapped. “No, I’m into
reading.
That’s what I’m going to do for a living.”

“You’re going to be a reader?”

“I’m going to be a librarian.”

Darla’s eyes softened and there was some kind of a new respect in her face that caught me off guard. “My uncle was a librarian,” she said quietly. “Good on you.”

“Thanks,” I said, the conversation taking a turn I hadn’t expected.
You’re still angry with her
, I told myself. I didn’t want to like her. Why did she have to be so likable?

“But I don’t think that they kept that
Fifty Shades
shit in our library. Least not in Peters, Ohio. Maybe one of the bigger cities would let you check that out but where I’m from, some preacher would come up with some boycott and the next thing you know there’d be no library and there’d be a, you know, Dunkin’ Donuts there now.”

She rambled and I tuned her out. It was remarkably like conversing with my mom. My eyes shot over to Sam.

Darla’s eagle eyes followed mine. “You got a thing for him, don’t you?” she said.

That made my blood run cold. “Who I have a thing for or don’t have a thing for is none of your business.”

“It is when it’s with the band,” she said.

I snorted. “Why, because they’re all
yours
?”

She pulled her neck back, frowning. “No, they’re not
all
mine,” she said.

The emphasis on the word ‘all’ made me shoot to my feet. I was shaking and I had never in my life been this close to reaching out and slapping someone. Instead of making a fool of myself, I turned around and marched off to the bathroom.

Sam

Amy was here again.
 

Something was different about her. It was hard to catch a solid look at her with the lighting in here but her face was tilted as she talked to Darla, an angry, smoldering look in her eyes. Her body language said that she couldn’t stand even one more second of talking to Joe and Trevor’s woman. Darla didn’t seem to get it, just plowing through and talking to Amy in spite of all of the obvious signals.

Then again, that was Darla—she was the same way with the rest of us. At first, it was infuriating and then, after a while, it grew on you. Nothing was going to grow on Amy, though. She was pissed and I wondered why. What had Darla done to her?

None of that was important to me, though. What was important was that Amy came here. She was wearing a tailored shirt that was anything but businesslike, tapered against her waist, clinging to all the fine curves and making her breasts stand out. She turned her head and ran an angry hand through her hair, setting pearls dancing on the silver hoops in her ears. The light caught on a matching necklace, a perfect circle of silver, dropping a line of smaller pearls from her collarbone to her cleavage.
 

It wasn’t my fault my eyes were drawn to her breasts. Blame the necklace.

Something
womanly
about Amy had always been intriguing. She wasn’t one of the athletic girls with boyish bodies and abs so tight you could roll a joint on them and have plenty of room left. She was more like a woman from the movies, one who was older and wiser, with a pinup girl’s kind of savvy. She always dressed a little on the frumpy side, the kind of girl you didn’t think much of from the outside but when you peeled back the layers—and I’m speaking metaphorically right now, but I wanted to be speaking literally—you found an enormous treasure underneath.

Amy snubbed Darla and turned away. And Darla—now it was her turn to be pissed. Whatever was going on over there made Amy angry, and focused, and passionate. Jesus, I wanted to tap into that. What was Darla saying to trigger such a hot response?
 

Something in me melted, softened, as if a hard core of steel had been driving me forward, tinged with anger and coated with regret. My heart began to beat faster and hope slammed itself repeatedly against my chest wall.
What if? What if? What if?
was the beat that ran through my head and, as Darla walked away shaking her head slowly, mystified, I felt the same way—except, from a completely different angle.

“Hey, Sam!” shouted Tyler, the new bassist for the group. He was filling in while Joe was at orientation for law school at Penn. “Can you help me with this amp?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said and stood. My eyes broke away from Amy for a few seconds and when I turned back to look she was chatting with Goddamn fucking Liam. He had a way of holding his body like he was the
only
man in the room. In a way, he was—he was
the dude
. Liam needed to be the only guy in the room—and when I say need, I mean
need.
It was his weakness. There was something about the fight in him and the constant arrogance that made him equally fascinating and annoying. It got tiring to pull him out of fights, or to pick him off of a girl’s wrath. Most of all, it got tiring because if you have to repeatedly prove your manhood...

Maybe it’s not as strong as you think.

Amy

From the Ladies’ Room door, I watched Darla march off, finally taking the hint. She seemed like someone who would be pretty interesting once you got to know her, and I didn’t like being nasty to her. But anybody who was passing herself around the band like a tray of appetizers...are you kidding me? That’s not the kind of person I wanted to be friends with.

I watched her walk up to the stage and grab Trevor like she owned him. The way his hand snaked around her waist, enjoying a handful of flesh, how her arms slid under his ribs and then up, fingers intertwining with his hair and their mouths connecting. A tug of envy pulled inside me. Not that I wanted Trevor—but I wanted
that.
I wanted a man to touch me, and own me with his hands as if nothing else mattered in the world.

Trevor pulled back, whispered something in her ear, and she tipped her head back and laughed. It was an intimate moment, and one I felt privileged to watch, despite feeling disgusted by the easy way she traveled from man to man on that stage.
Dammit!
I wanted to be that close to a group of people. I wanted to be part of something so edgy, and fun, and intense.

Instead, here I sat in the back of the bar, with a fucking tablet in my lap, nose buried in a book, which was not something new. It might be my tablet nowadays but I was still the mousy, bookish Amy. The part of me that hated what Darla represented now admired it a bit. She was free—really
free
, up there talking, and laughing, and joking.

And then, she stepped away from Trevor and damn it if her hands didn’t touch Sam. He reached for her in a friendly hug and I knew, from the body language, that there wasn’t anything going on. All the air in me whooshed out in one big, relieved sigh at the same time that I imagined myself her, that his palms were wrapped around my shoulders, that his cheek touched mine, that the friendly, quick embrace was nothing like what Darla and Trevor had just shared. Sam pulled back and said something. Whatever it was, it seemed kind because Darla smiled and I saw a single tear travel down her cheek, then disappear past her jawline and under her shirt.

The shine of Kleig lights made it possible to see everything and Sam’s face softened, the compassionate look making me wonder what on Earth was going on. Something had morphed up there—the atmosphere was less exuberant and then, the new bass player. It all clicked. Joe. Joe Ross was...
gone?

As if on cue, an all too familiar voice said from behind me, “If you stare any harder they’ll turn into stone.”

I whirled around and there stood Liam, wearing a ratty t-shirt, jeans that fit
every
part of him perfectly, and with hands tensed and ready to perform. He grabbed the chair next to me, twisted it around and straddled it, crossing his forearms over the back. “You’ve still got it bad, don’t you Amy?” he said, pointing at Sam.

It was just a flick of a finger, nothing obvious, but it made me burn inside.

Something about Liam made it impossible to lie. “I know. I admit it.” It was the first time I had acknowledged it to anyone. It made me feel complete somehow, as if it were out there—an emotion that now had form.

“You see the new bass player?” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked. “What’s going on? Where’s Joe?”

“Joe left,” he said with a tone of intrigue injected. Liam could do that—there was an affect he had, a way of being on stage all the time. It got old pretty quickly but when he was on, he was
on.
The golden boy.

“Left? You mean left for good?”

“No, he got into Penn. He’s at some kind of orientation but we had to get a new bass player because he’s not going to be back that often.”

“Is that why Darla’s crying?” I asked. “One of her fuck toys is gone?” I used the words on purpose just to seem Liam’s reaction.

He flinched. “Your horns are showing, Amy.”

“Nice of you to acknowledge that I have them, Liam.”

His eyes narrowed and he studied me. I could feel that look crawl over my forehead, my hair, my eyes, nose, and mouth, traveling down, down, down, down until I was breathing so hard I imagined that when he got to my chest it heaved like some heroine in one of those cheesy bodice rippers Darla was just talking about. “If you think Darla’s being passed around like a piece of meat...you’re dead wrong. She’s Trevor and Joe’s, and that’s it.”

I couldn’t help myself—I was so weak. “You mean she’s not...Sam’s?”

Steely eyes the color of a bright blue sky reflecting over a pure Caribbean sea stared back at me. “You’re safe there,” he said in an assuring voice, one that changed from calculating and judging to inclusive and compassionate. “But Amy, whatever you feel for Sam, you need to let him know.”

“I did let him know,” I insisted. “Four and a half years ago.”

“I know you did.” He reached out and touched my hand. It felt brotherly and yet, with an edge. “But it’s been four and a half years and you’re here, sitting in the dark with a thousand books on that little machine, in a bar where one of the hottest bands in the Boston area—hell,” he chuckled, “in the
world
if I do say so myself.” He squared his shoulders and shot me a cocky grin. “Where we’re playing and you’re hiding back here like a church mouse. Go for it. Tell him what you think. Tell him what you
feel.
”

“Speaking of going for it,” I said. “How is Charlotte?”

His grin snapped shut like it was spring loaded. “You’re like a sniper with perfect aim,” he said, his jaw clenched and off centered, tight and restrained.

“No. Just a champion debater,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He frowned and I took that as my moment to get the hell out of here.

Fate had other ideas, as Sam strode over to us with a determined step, his body all sweat and muscle, his eyes intense and focused. My heart slammed into my throat and Liam followed my look.

“Hi, Sam,” Liam said, his face morphing to an impish grin as I steeled myself for the first chance I’d been given to finally –
finally
– say what I’d wanted to say all these years to Sam.

I miss you
. Those were the first words that popped into my mind? Struggling to maintain a neutral face as Sam’s eyes found mine, the roiling chaos inside me churned so fast. No! Not
I miss you
.
 
I couldn’t tell him that, even if it were true.

Especially because it was true.

Sam

Darla came over and gave Trevor a hug, then surprised me with one. She was warm and soft, and hey—I’m a guy. It felt nice. But her jaw trembled against my neck and I pulled back, catching her eyes and finding tears in them.

“Upset about Joe?”

She swallowed hard and nodded. “Nothing will be the same.”

“Penn’s a
great
school.”
Oh, that was comforting, Dumbass.

“I’m a
great
lay,” she whispered.

That made me laugh, and she joined me, a sad smile twisting her lips.

“It’ll be fine.” The words were just an impulse. Were they true? Hell if I know.

Tyler asked me yet another question about the audio equipment as my eyes rocked with disbelief when I took another look into the crowd. There was Liam chatting up Amy
again
. It was bad enough to watch the two of them back on the Common, but here? Was she coming because of him? Or was she coming because of me?

This was going from stupid to stupider. Her reaction to him was pissing me off.
I
was supposed to be the guy standing over there talking to her.
I
was supposed to be the one getting her eyes on me the way they were eating him up.
I
was supposed to be the one who reached out and touched her hand, who had all of her attention, who had all of her focus. And
I
was supposed to be the guy who saw no one but her. Except, instead of being that guy,
I
was the guy who completely dicked her over four years ago. So, which guy was I going to be right now?