Give Me You (12 page)

“Do you want me to leave you alone, Corin? Because I’m tough enough to take it if that’s what you want.”

I can’t help but think of the accident, the way he had Landen’s back without hesitation, and how much fun we had later that night, just hanging out. As much as I’ve prided myself on not needing anyone, on not needing a man in my life period, and is certifiably crazy as this particular man makes me, the thought of him leaving me alone as he put it is painful.

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t want that. I just want…”

What the fuck do I want?

Apparently Skylar wants to know the same thing.

“Well…what the hell do you want?”

My mouth tugs upward at our similar line of thinking. I keep picturing Ryan Gosling screaming a similar question at Rachel McAdams.

Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes briefly. “I want…I want to know where we stand at all times. I need boundaries. I want to know that you aren’t going to hook up with the next thing that walks by just because I’m not giving it up. I want us to draw a line, I guess.”

“A line?” He arches a brow and folds his arms over his chest. “What kind of line?”

“A friendship line,” I say, formulating my theory as I’m speaking it. “I want us to be friends who are getting to know each other like you said. And I want to keep it at that until we reach a mutual decision about whether or not we want to be more. And until we decide about being more, I’m not going to be ready for any type of sexual relationship. Do you think you can handle that?”

It’s a lot to ask of a red-blooded American nineteen year-old male. I know this. I just need a little more effort. And some patience.

Skylar strokes his chin thoughtfully. He’s making me sweat—dragging it out the same way I’ve done to him. I examine my Lincoln Park After Dark manicure as if I couldn’t care less what his answer is.

But I care, God do I care. And he apparently has more patience than I do.

“For God sake’s Martin, say something.”

His lips twitch. “I’m thinking it over. For the most part it’s a reasonable enough offer, but my dick thinks you’re a mean, mean, girl.”

My eyebrows lift and I flash him an amused smile. “Well my body thinks you’re overestimating your ability to fuck it into submission.”

I win. Skylar looks like I just hit him with a flying throat punch.

Tension ripples his angular jaw line and I have the strangest urge to lick it. Damn hormones. They are not cooperating at all.

“Corin…I’m going to back down on the inappropriate comments the best that I can.” He leans into my space but I refuse to budge. I remain statue still as he moves my hair off my left shoulder. “But trust me when I tell you, I could do things to your body that you don’t even have names for. And I feel it, the way you tremble when I touch you unexpectedly, the way you clench your delectable thighs together when I say those dirty things in your ear. So please, inform any parts of your anatomy that doubt me that I will be proving them all kinds of wrong as soon as you give me permission to do so.”

His erotic promise lingers in the air between us. It wraps around me like a boa constrictor, starting at my throat and squeezing hardest low in my stomach.

“So the line,” I choke out.

“Yes, Red. You can have your line.” He winks, gracing me with a wicked grin. “For now.”

We walk slowly back to the table to gather our things. “Sky?”

He turns around and waits for me at the door. “Yeah?”

“Don’t call the waitress.”

He grins, tossing the crumpled ticket in the trashcan on the way out. “I was never going to, sweetheart.”

S
he’s afraid of sex.

I don’t know why exactly, but worrying about has kept me up half the night.

Someone had to have done something to make her afraid of it. Apparently I care about her even more than I realize because the caveman urge to find whoever hurt her and break his goddamn neck is overwhelming.

Jesus. I’ve been hanging around O’Brien too long.

But for all her smart-mouthed strength and determination, the look she gets every time we move past her imaginary fucking friendship line is laced with desire and unadulterated fear. And I’m not a particularly scary guy.

Girls usually look at me like a prime cut of beef that’s fallen from the sky after they’ve been starved on an island adhering to a strictly vegan diet. I’m used to flashing eyes, sultry stares, and tongues rolling over lips before teeth sink into them.

Corin gives me a tiny hint of that, quick flickers of want that are almost immediately replaced with a wide-eyed fear that’s so uncharacteristic of her that it makes my chest ache. She stands up to O’Brien like it’s nothing. I’ve heard her make multiple threats involving his balls. And dude is not one hundred percent stable. But I mention tasting her sweet lips—yes, both sets, because honestly, I want to taste them both pretty badly—and she looks like I’ve threatened to throw her in a pit of vipers.

My ego has developed a slight complex from the constant rebuffing. My dick is not even on speaking terms with me at the moment. Strangely, it’s not either of them currently making my decisions for a change. I’m actually thinking with the right head for once. Girls like Corin Connelly do not come along every day. She’s strong and confident, witty, and frankly, more fun to be around than well…anyone. But Christ Almighty I just want to understand what her damn deal is.

I’m contemplating the dynamic of our relationship—mostly the way that we seem to disagree on pretty much everything—when the idea begins to form in my head.

Sometimes Corin and I listen to each other, and on a few rare occasions we’ve even compromised, accepting each others opposing viewpoints as not complete nonsense. But there’s one thing, one solid thing between us that we consistently disagree on.

Our roommates.

I’ve seen O’Brien’s rage and I’ve seen him up close on the soccer field. Dude is as intense at they come. None of that is shit compared to the way he feels about Layla Flaherty. So my position on them is that they’re in it for the long haul. Ten, twenty, hell, fifty years from now, they will be attached at the hip replacements.

But Corin disagrees. Corin thinks they’re too young to have met
the one
and that when we graduate they’ll part ways. We discuss it over lunch in the Student Union between classes.

“It’s a phase, Skylar. We all go through it,” she tells me while dipping her fries into mustard, because of course she can’t just eat ketchup like a normal person. “Layla’s just temporarily in love with the bad boy. But it’s not a forever thing. His anger and his inability to control it will end them eventually.”

She reiterated that when that happened, she’d be there for Layla. And since I’ve been deemed O’Brien’s best, well, technically,
only
friend, she told me I’d have to be there for him. But she’s wrong. Little miss sophisticated seen-it-all New Yorker doesn’t seem to know jack when it comes to relationships.

I can see how it looks that way, like Landen and Layla are burning so hot they’re bound to burn out, but I also know how I felt about my first car. It was a vintage Aston Martin, something I bought myself for cheap and fixed up. She’d been nearly totaled and was minus an engine but I named her Marty and I straight up loved that thing. Deep, intense, all-consuming love. I washed and waxed her regularly with my own two hands. No one and I mean NO ONE touched her. I was very particular about who got to actually ride in her. I even turned down pussy on occasion to be with her.

I was going to be buried in that car.

So I know about love, and I know that the way I felt when my parents traded Marty for a top of the line Audi without telling me. I was fucking livid. I wouldn’t touch that damn Audi, and call me spoiled, I didn’t talked to my parents for a month—not that they necessarily noticed. Marty was mine. Marty mattered to me. I paid for her with money I’d made working summers at the country club and I kept up the insurance and maintenance my damn self. They had no right and frankly, I’m still pissed that they didn’t get that I’d rather have something of mine that I worked for than something they decided to bestow upon me.

Assholes.

But I remember the way I felt about Marty, the way I looked forward to seeing her, the way I made sure she didn’t get dinged or scratched or dented by some careless dickhead not paying attention. I would’ve put that car in fucking bubble wrap if I could have. And still, all that, and it’s nothing compared to O’Brien and the twisted way his heart has melded itself to Layla’s.

He will never let her go. That’s what Corin doesn’t see. That he is in this for life and judging from the way Layla shattered in his arms the night he wrecked his truck, the feeling is mutual.

I want to know what makes Corin so damn jaded and cynical. Mostly I want to know what makes her immune to my charms, the ones that have worked impeccably for me all these years and seem to have very little affect on her. So the next night after our enlightening lunchtime conversation, I’m laying it my bed in the middle of the night when the idea comes to me.

She’ll never compromise on her stance on Landen and Layla, never admit that they’re it for each other. It’s going to take a good night’s sleep for me to work out the logistics, but the basic plan is already forming.

If I can get her to bet me that they’ll do anything for each other, I will win. And when I’m proven right, she’ll have to take me to the one place where she can’t hide whatever it is she’s hiding.

Here I come New York.

S
ince we came to our little agreement, Skylar and I have been spending a lot of time together. Either at the library during his study hours or at Jax’s place playing video games. We even took a semi-date-like trip to the movies and the nearby mall.