All That Remains (23 page)

She doesn’t disappoint him as she sucks in her breath and lowers his hand, pressing against her lower back tightly. “So yea, gorgeous, I made some plans. I hope you don’t mind my being so presumptuous.”

“You can be presumptuous all you want if it means I get to be with you,” she whispers hotly against his cheek.

“I’m never letting you go again, Jules,” he murmurs and rubs up against her. “Damn it, we need to go.”

Jules laughs at the tension in West’s voice. “Yes, I think we definitely should.”

Twenty-Eight

West

They’re barely out of the elevator before West picks her up and carries her towards her room, her legs wrapped around his waist and her lips leaving trails of hot kisses along his jaw, neck, and collar bone.

“Keys?” he orders, his fingers digging into her backside.

“Oh no!” Jules sits back and West has to throw her against the door before she falls backwards. “I didn’t bring a key. Katie had her purse.”

He jiggles the handle to verify it’s locked and bites his lip to keep from laughing at their predicament. His shorts are sporting a very noticeable bulge, his girlfriend’s heavenly body is wrapped around him and begging for a little attention, and he’s locked out of the only room with a bed he can get into unless they want to drive thirty minutes.

“Well, damn.” he mutters, meeting her hot gaze and laughing.

Her face brightens and she slaps his arm. “Cassie! Next door. She should be here.”

“I should probably put you down then,” he teases and presses her back to the door, kissing her soundly before letting her legs slide to the ground. “Stay in front of me though, unless you want Cassie to get a look at my excitement.”

Jules’ face goes crimson as she glances between them; the corners of her mouth turn up into a smile as her hands adjust her skewed shirt.

“Proud of yourself, huh?”

“Maybe a little,” she shrugs playfully. She moves to slide out from between him and the door and West pulls her back against his chest. One hand presses against her lower abdomen while the other wraps around her shoulder across her chest.

His face skims her neck and he takes a deep breath of her scent in. She’s a mixture of sweat, flowers, beach, and the same strawberry shampoo he smelled on her in the seventh grade. “You just wait until I get you in that bed, Buffy. Payback is hell, baby.”

He feels her body go limp against him as she tilts her head to the side, allowing his lips access to kiss on her neck.

“Just sleeping, huh?”

“Well, maybe a little fun.” He flicks his tongue on her neck once and lets her go, smacking her butt as she hurries to Cassie and Jess’ door.

Jules knocks on the door as West comes up behind her and pulls her back in front of him. As tired as he is, he can’t stop touching her and he props his chin on the top of her head as Jules knocks again.

“Cassie, it’s Jules,” she whisper shouts, her lips close to the door.

A moment later, Cassie opens the door. West had met her briefly three weeks ago at his game, but since then he hasn’t seen her. She’s wearing an oversized tee shirt and yoga pants. Her dark hair is piled on the top of her head the way Jules wears hers when she’s hanging out and West can see a computer sitting on the bed in the room behind her.

“Um, hey?” she says awkwardly, looking at them standing before her at two-thirty in the morning.

“Did we wake you? I didn’t have a key, so sorry,” Jules apologizes, stepping into the room and pulling West with her.

“No. I was just, um…” she glances at her computer. “I was watching a movie. By myself on a Saturday night.”

“Is that a Bourne movie?” West asks when he spies a paused scene he recognizes.

“Yeah. I might have a thing for kick ass movies.”

“That’s cool. You know, I think the first was my favorite, but the fight scenes in the second, man-”

“West, hun. You want to stay and watch the movie?” Jules asks, tugging on his hand as she crosses the room.

He flashes a smile at Cassie before heading through the bathroom and into Jules’ and Katie’s room. Behind him, Jules apologizes to Cassie for bothering her again and he hears the click of a door. She pokes her head into her dark room as West fiddles around for the switch on her bedside lamp.

“Hey, I’m gonna wash up real quick.”

The light clicks on and West finds himself standing in Jules’ room alone. He looks at the items on the table next to her bed and smiles when he sees her notebook and pencil sitting there, recalling how she kept the same one by her bed back home. She’d told him once that she was a doodler and her mind would wander at night and drawing or writing would help calm her so she could sleep. The toilet flushes in the bathroom and he hears the water turn on; he figures he only has a minute, but he wonders if it’s still there.

Picking up the flower covered spiral notebook, he flips through the first few pages, smiling at her pictures and bold writing. A few pages in he finds what he’s looking for and the reaction he has surprises him.

The click of the bathroom door opening startles him and he drops the notebook like a guilty thief, stepping back.

“My turn.”

“What were you doing?” she asks, looking at her desk and then him as she pulls out her ponytail.

“Nothing. Just standing here, looking at your room.” He shrugs and she tells him to feel free to shower off if he wants.

“I don’t want sand in my bed.”

West nods and cleans up quickly, stripping off his clothes and shaking his boxers and shorts in the shower before rinsing off. After he squeezes a bit of toothpaste onto his finger and runs it over his teeth, he opens the door with his shirt in his hand and finds her sitting cross-legged on the bed.

She’s changed into a small tank top that clings to her curves in the most appetizing way and a checkered pair of shorts. The copper hair he loves so much is pulled to the side leaving one shoulder uncovered and begging for a kiss; suddenly West starts to think it was ridiculous for him to assume he could sleep with her and not
sleep
with her. He’s about to suggest he sleep on Katie’s bed for her own safety when he realizes she has her notebook sitting in front of her.

“Jules?”

“You were looking at my notebook?” she asks, looking up at him with those crystal blue eyes.

“Busted,” he confesses.

He drops his shirt on the chair and gets into her bed. Moving to lie against the wall, he props his head on his elbow and looks at her. “Sorry?”

“Oh, I’m not mad at you. I just, why did you lie to me? It’s only my random stuff.” She flips to the back of the almost full notebook and points at the little stick drawings, happy faces, and flowers she’s drawn. “I did these when I got back the night we made up.”

She flips the page to one covered in hearts with arrows and his name scrolled everywhere. He sits up next to her and smiles at her pictures.

“You want to know what I was looking at?” he asks, pushing her hair off her shoulder so he can see her face. She nods and he flips to the front of the notebook; back to the page he was looking at previously.

Her head snaps to look at him. He’s turned to a page with a loose piece of paper tucked in place. The paper is covered with three words that evoke immediate pain in him. ‘Who Am I?’

“Remember the night we went out for your birthday? You were getting ready and I felt so bad because I’d lost my phone and you told me to leave Carson’s number in your notebook?” he asks and her eyes register the memory.

“It… you left it in here. It’s in the front,” she tells him.

“Yeah. When I did, this paper fell out. Look at it, Jules.”

She frowns sadly. “I was being eaten by guilt over Tanya and I felt as if I’d lost myself.”

“I know, baby. Look at it,” he says again, handing her the sheet. Her fingers tremble as they reach for the paper and she studies it. A tear eases down her cheek and he forces himself to not hold her.

He doesn’t have to watch her search the page to know when she sees what he is showing her. Her gasp gives her away and her hand covers her mouth in a small sob.

“When?” she asks, turning to him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.

“That night,” he admits, taking the paper from her and looking at it.

In one corner of the paper she had written in large print ‘Who Am I?” and underneath it he’d responded:

You Are Mine

~W

He tucks the paper in the notebook and tosses it gently to the floor.

“I never saw it. I wish I had.”

“Me too. I wanted you to know exactly who you were, but I was wrong.”

“How so?”

“You’re not mine, Buffy. I don’t own you any more than you own me, and I think that’s where we went wrong the first time. We were bound to erupt eventually. We were too hot, too loaded with guilt and regret… and pain.” She smiles, scooting down and pulling him with her so they were lying side by side.

“You’re not that girl anymore. You are the strong, confident Jules Blacklin from before the storm. The one I fell in love with after I kissed her in the closet at a party. And I sure as hell am not that scared boy, not most of the time anyway.”

Her hand brushes the naked skin of his torso as they look at each other. Her nails teasing up and down his side completely turning him on.

“I get what you’re saying, but I want you to know I am yours.” He tries to disagree and she presses her finger to his lips. “Shhh. I am yours, West. I’ve only ever been yours and I will always be yours. You’re my anchor. Even in the bad times, when you were gone and I wanted to dissolve into a puddle of nothing because you’d left me alone… no, don’t look so sad,” she urges when her words tear at his soul. “You were my anchor. I used the thought of you to pull me up. Every hard moment in physical therapy, every sad song, and sappy romantic movie, everything that reminded me of you only gave me motivation. I was going to show you I could be okay again.”

“Baby, you are more than okay and I don’t know what I did to deserve you. But I’ll be damned if I’m letting you go now.”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before you lose me again, Spike.”

Gripping his side, Jules rolls to her back and pulls him on top of her. Their mouths meet and sparks fly as they both give everything they have to one another. No more fear, no more doubts. This is right. This is meant to be. They are made for each other.

Twenty-Nine

Jules

“You’re not peeking are you?” West asks for the tenth time in thirty minutes since they left the restaurant.

It’s the Saturday night after West’s last regular season game and all of the girls, including Cassie, and even Jeff were able to make it to watch since it was a late one and A&M had played at eleven that day. No one discusses the fact that Austin didn’t come. Jules feels guilty, wondering if the news that she and West are back together has bothered him more than he is willing to admit. She’s barely seen him over the past few weeks and West said he’s been staying in the dorms so he hasn’t had time with him either.

They went for a victory celebration dinner at a local burger joint afterwards and cut up for over an hour before everyone claimed fatigue and left to head back to A&M. Jules was staying with West at his house for the night.

After they’d hugged their friends goodbye and jumped in his truck, West had turned to her with that little half grin of his.

“Do you trust me?” he’d asked and she’d immediately become suspicious.

“Yee-es.”

“I have a surprise for you, but you have to put this on.” He produced a red bandanna and handed it to her.

“Around my neck? Are we into robbery now? Are times that desperate, Twelve?”

“No, smart alec. Over your eyes, like a blindfold.”

“Oh. Duh.” Jules grins and feels a little blonde at the moment. She ties the cloth around her face and sighs as he tells her not to peek.

It’s been thirty minutes since they left the parking lot of the restaurant and she is thoroughly confused about where they are going or what they might be doing. Her birthday is in two days and she assumes the secrecy has something to do with that, but it’s likely after midnight at this point and she can’t imagine what he has planned.

The car pulls to a stop and she hears West turn the engine off. Through the fabric covering her eyes she can barely make out the glow of the interior lights as he opens and closes his door.

“Stay there and I’ll come around,” he warns and shuts the door.

She waits impatiently, listening for him, before he opens the door and lifts her down from the truck.

“Walk or carry?”

“Excuse me?” she asks, confused.

“Do you want to walk, blindfolded? Or do you want me to carry you?” West explains, his fingers weaving into hers and giving her a tight squeeze.

“How treacherous is the territory? I mean, am I likely to kill myself walking?”

West laughs and bumps into Jules side before she feels his arms go under her knees and around her back; suddenly she is being lifted into his arms and carried. Her arms go around his neck as she complains about his giving her a choice and then making the decision for her.

“Sorry, Buff, I wanted to carry you,” he replies, kissing her cheek.

“Where in the world are we?” she asks as she listens to the surroundings in an attempt to hear something.

She hears the loud roar of a motorcycle engine in the distance, but no voices, no other cars. So they’re somewhere more secluded. However, the air is silent, no bugs chirping, no sticks or leaves popping or cracking as West walks; this makes her rule out the woods or a field.

“Okay,” he finally says after he’s walked around for a good five minutes. He sets her down, her boots sinking into the soft ground and her hand goes to remove the blindfold. “No! Not yet!” he yells, grabbing her arm.

“West!”

“Patience, girl, patience.” He pauses and she bites her tongue. “Okay, now.”

He yanks the blindfold up from her head and she blinks her eyes as they automatically start watering from being covered. When they adjust to her surroundings, she is completely thrown for a loop and then utterly overwhelmed.