Hitting to Win (Over the Fence #2) (4 page)

A
nother thing
I like about college? The parties.

The people, the loud music, the liquor. It’s exactly what I need at the end of a long week, and the occasional Tuesday night, to let my hair down. Although, when I'm out at the off campus houses, packed to the brim with students, I do miss Kels. Not that I don't miss her every second of the day, she's like one of my limbs, but partying just isn't the same without her spicy, funky energy. Minka comes out, she'd never let me go alone, but she's not as social, and usually holes herself up in some corner making bedroom eyes at Owen. Eventually, those bedroom eyes cause them to leave early most nights.

I've been talking to the cornerback of the football team, Steven Bryant, who lives here, for about half an hour now, sipping my third cranberry and vodka. I'm tipsy, but not overly so. I'm in that happy place where everything is mellow but I don't feel sick yet.

"So, you're a dancer right?" His question comes off as if he wants to get to know more about me, but his eyes tell me something different entirely. He wants to sleep with me. That's okay, I'm not opposed to it. He's cute, has a nice body, he's engaging in a conversation with me instead of trying to grind into me on the dance floor. I haven't decided if I want to sleep with him yet. I've done the one-night stand thing a couple of times, out of necessity.

Doing it with Steven would probably be okay, except I can't get the thought that he's not as good as Miles out of my head. I wish there was a technology where you could flush the feelings of a crush out of your system.

A loud, screeching sound comes from the back wall where the speaker system is set up. I look over to see Miles, splayed out on the floor, covered in alcohol and red cups that had previously been sitting on the speaker, which is now covering his upper half. Oh, crap.

My head is on a swivel as I frantically search the room for Owen. He's got to get Miles out of here. Miles is already in enough trouble with the Kappa's, rumors I'd heard around campus, and when I'd seen him earlier, he looked drunk enough to puke at any minute.

Finally, I spot Owen and Minka through the doorway in the kitchen, where he's between her legs while she's propped up on the kitchen counter. They're going at it like no one else is in this house.

"Sorry to break up the lovefest, but Miles just knocked over a speaker in the living room and is laying on the floor. You have to go help, Owen."

Owen breaks off their kiss with an angry grunt and slams his fist down on the counter. Minka just looks worried. "Christ...nah. I'm done picking up his messes. He's done nothing but destroy himself this year. Maybe facing some consequences will do some good." His jaw ticks, like he's tensing every muscle in his body.

I turn to Minka, who is usually vocal about her opinions, but here, she's toeing the line. She and Owen must have discussed Miles's behavior at length.

I turn, not knowing what to do. We can't just all leave him there. He's our friend. Well, not really my friend, but he's friends with my friends.

I head back into the living room, where the guys in the house are trying to pick Miles up and get the music back on at the same time. They shove Miles against the wall, and he leans on it like the world might fall. One of the football players is descending on him, getting in his face about messing up their stuff. Without thinking, I cut in.

"Alright boys. Its clear this fella has had a bit to drink, let's calm down. I'll take it from here." I bat my eyelashes an extra time for effect in Steven's direction, and he waves the other guys off.

I grab Miles's enormous frame and shoulder his weight as I wrap my arm around his waist and drag us from the room. I need to get him cleaned up before I try to send him home. One look at him and campus police, or worse, real cops, will be way too curious about where he's been.

He's making it difficult to walk, not only because of his bulk, but because he's resisting my help.

"Get off me Ballet Barbie. I don't need your help." He's slurring his words a bit, and pointing his finger at what he thinks must be my face. Instead, he's pointing at my boobs.

"I'm trying to help you...just...come with me."

Lord knows how I managed to heave him up the stairs, but I do, and find a privater, quieter bathroom that I shove him into.

"Is this another one of your attempts to hook up, princess? Because I mean at this point, fine. Less just do it...but only if you're going to suck my dick. Because I really like blow jobs." He giggles at himself. Meanwhile, my face is blotchy and searing with shame.

I ignore him, pressing on with my mission of helping him. Someone has to.

His olive-green button down is covered in stale beer, and he's ripped through the right sleeve, a medium-sized cut oozing blood. I'm going to have to take his shirt off to clean that up.

I grab him like he's some sort of doll, and sit him on the closed toilet. I push him back, and he grins suggestively at me. Mortification burns my cheeks, but I press on, unbuttoning his shirt while he whistles at me. Finally I get it off and begin to take tissues, wetting them in the sink to clean off his cut. Minka's the nurse, why isn't she doing this?

Bringing the wet wads of soggy tissue over to his arm, I wipe at the cut and then apply pressure, trying to make it clot. Miles is staring off into the distance, lost to this world for the time being.

It’s then that I allow myself one peek at his chest.

He's broad, but that's not a big enough word. Humongous, colossal? Miles is for sure the most enormous person I've ever met. His chest is solid, his creamy pecks sculpted and pronounced. He arms, which I've seen countless times before, are roped with muscle, and look like they could lift my car straight over his head. His abs are chiseled boulders, each level more incredible than the next. The tiny curls of blonde start at his pecks and cover his chest until they dip down below his jeans. My whole body flushes with the image of what is underneath that material.

And then I notice it. The small black script running across his left rib.
We dream so we don't have to be apart so long.

"What's this mean?" I run my finger across it, and Miles gasps.

He sits up, suddenly crowding into my space in the tiny bathroom. He looks enraged.

"What do you want, huh? Why are you always coming around me? If this is what you really want, then fine. I'll fucking give it to you."

Miles charges me, my body so shut down with shock at his outburst that I have no control over my limbs. He slams me, hard, against the tiny bathroom wall, and before I can think, his mouth is on mine.

My heart leaps into my throat, and it feels like my body is vibrating I'm so aroused. My impulses and reactions feel like they're on a three-second time delay, I'm not registering what happens until Miles has moved on to another tactic. I've been waiting for this moment for years. I've dreamed about it, imagined how it would happen and what he would say. I don't think half drunk in a disgusting bathroom is what I had in mind, but I make the best of any situation.

Miles has me pinned against the wall, his huge frame towering over me. He has to drag me up to kiss me, and he is, I can feel the tips of my grey flats brushing the floor.

He's kissing me with such raw hunger that my lips hurt from his rough exploration. He's consuming me, biting and sucking at my lips as he brutally assaults my mouth with his tongue. And I love every second of it. No one has ever been this aggressive with me, and I can feel my slick lust coating the inside of my thighs beneath my navy-striped dress.

Miles has an exacting grip on my jaw, he's using his hands to move my face and mouth where he wants it, when he wants it. My fingers dig into his biceps to hold on as he keeps me suspended.

My finger accidentally stabs the cut on his arm, and the sound he makes is primitive. He starts to feast on me even harder, grinding his massive erection into my stomach. The move makes me whimper, and I feel faint. I can't get a proper breath, but I don't care. He grinds into me again, and I break his onslaught against my mouth to moan a breathy "yes."

My feet hit the floor at the same time my head collides with the wall, a bite of pain wracking my whole body. Miles has dropped me, the spell broken by my moan.

He's bracing the sink, staring at me over his shoulder. His eyes are feral, his breathing ragged. His chest is moving with such force that it looks painful for him to huff the next breath out.

I'm shaking, my heart spasming violently in my chest. My arousal is so sharp that I can smell it in the air. I'm not sure if Miles is going to physically attack me, or rip my clothes to shreds.

Instead, he wrenches open the bathroom door and flees like the devil is on his heels. I'm left standing there, disoriented and weak, with his blood dripping off the fingers of my left hand.

D
eath must feel better
than the hangover I have right now. That's my first thought as I gingerly open the door to the theater building. My second is that I might still be drunk, because I could swear I just saw five guys dressed like moose walk by.

It feels like someone took an ice pick to my left temple it’s throbbing so bad. Plus, I have a line of bruises on my torso and this gnarly gash on my arm. I guess that's what happen when you try to fight a speaker system and lose. I'm never drinking again.

My feet are fighting me as I walk down the hall to our Saturday morning studio. I wish I could cut and run in the other direction, but my ego is forcing me to stay. If Chloe had the balls to show up, I did too.

I was a fucking idiot for kissing her last night. No, I did more than kiss her. I basically branded her, tried to engrave my tongue onto hers. I was rough, but she didn't shy away. Which only made me more violent. Was there anything I could do to make this girl hate me?

Not that I wanted to make her hate me anymore. Or I did. I don't know. I'm confused, and this hangover is not helping.

And there she is, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as if we hadn’t been at the same shit-show party last night. Today she has on a white bodysuit, a grey sweater that ties under her tits, and white heels with these fuzzy tubes around her ankles. She looks like a hot 80’s dancer or something.

I haven’t thought much about what I’m going to say to her or how I’m going to play this, but ignoring it sounds like a good idea. Even though that smoldering makeup is the only thing that has been playing on a loop in my brain for twelve hours.

I drop my drawstring bag heavily so she can hear my arrival over the hum of the classical ballad streaming around the studio. Chloe whips around, her black ponytail fanning out as her head turned, the strands like black silk floating through the air.

“Oh! Good morning…” She is already making things awkward, an uneasy pitch marking her tone, her high cheekbones turning the shade of bubble gum. I think I hear hope in her greeting, and it twists my gut. I shouldn’t feel guilty, I didn’t promise her anything.

“Hi.” My answer is short and brusque. I join her, making a real effort to appear intensely focused on my stretches. In reality, I’m so limber from all the baseball and dancing these days, I don’t even really need to warm up. I can feel her eyes slide to me every so often, the hitch of her breath like she’s going to speak, and then deciding against it.

“So let’s get to this. We have a long day, right? Gotta prepare for Tuesday.” Chloe nods at my statement. Tuesday is our first dance in the competition. The first time we’ll dance in front of an audience, collect a score. We had a lot of work to do.

For the next hour and a half, Chloe and I choreograph a dance, slowly moving around each other, suggesting a step here, a turn there. Occasionally we touch each other, trying to work the routine out together, but the moves are disjointed, awkward.

Finally, I suggest we try the lift we’ve been talking about. I think it’ll set us apart, show people we aren’t fucking around.

“I’m not sure we really need to do one.” Chloe’s eyes dart around the studio, her fingers pulling at the ends of her long, sleek mane.

“You don’t want to win?” I almost sneer at her. I’m at my wits’ end and we still have probably four to five hours ahead of us. We haven’t even timed the dance to music yet.

“Of course I do, I just—“

“Okay, so let’s go, twinkle toes.” I walk a short distance away from her.

“Okay, so we’ll try to add a boat lift. I’ll sashay towards you, when I get close, grab my hips and I’ll push off, you raising my body over my head, and then holding me there. Kind of like Baby in Dirty Dancing.” She shakes out her limbs, rolling her neck. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was nervous.

“Got it. Move your ass, princess.”

Chloe’s eyes narrow, her focus pinned to a singular spot in the middle of my chest. Her whole body tightens, and when I count in beats of eights, she starts off, skipping elegantly but powerfully towards me. When she comes toe-to-toe with me, I grab her hips, ready to launch her above my head.

But at the last second, she lets her body go heavy, rooting herself to the floor. “Agh…”

She pushes against me, and I release her slim waist, I can practically encircle the entire thing with my big hands. Chloe casts her eyes down to the floor, but I know that reaction. The fear, the mental block, the disappointment. I’ve had hitting slumps. I know what its like to balk when a 90 mile-an-hour fastball is coming towards your head.

“Why did you chicken out?” Okay, probably could have said that nicer.

“I didn’t chicken out!” She snaps. Woah, that’s not the princess I know. She looks wigged out, pulling on the ends of her ponytail extra hard now. I realize that’s her nervous tick.

“Okay, let’s just try again.” This time when I do a count and she runs towards me, she stops short again, letting out a frustrated yelp.

“What’s wrong with you?” Again, probably could have phrased that differently. Oh, well.

“Nothing is wrong with me!” Chloe grabs her water bottle. She loiters over by her bag, just lingering there. I’m unsure about what to do next.

“Are you scared?” I really can’t say anything that will comfort this girl. I just don’t have it in me at this point.

“I just…I don’t like lifts, okay? I don’t want to be dropped.” The words come out of her mouth in rushed, quiet remarks.

“So you don’t trust me?” I shouldn’t care if she says no, but for some stupid reason I’m really hoping she doesn’t.

“Well…no. I really don’t.” Damnit.

“Okay…” I try to not to angry glare at her, but my trademark scowl fights to stay on my face.

“Miles, come on. Why would I trust you? You can’t even own up to the fact that you kissed me last night. Let’s not pretend things haven’t been awkward all morning.” Coming from anyone else, her words would sound feisty or whiny. But from Chloe, they sound genial, just an apologetic statement of fact.

Her honesty threw me off a little. “I mean, what do you want me to say? It was a mistake? Sorry it happened. I was really drunk, and you were a girl who trapped me in a tiny bathroom.”

Hurt flashes in her amethyst-colored eyes, and I instantly regret being such a dick. Which is a very new feeling. I know she’s liked me for years, and I really don’t have an excuse for why I never went for her. Maybe because, deep down, I knew it would be very different with her. I don’t do well with real emotions, real connection. Perhaps because after Jay was gone, I was never on the receiving end of affection again.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Chloe.” I surprise myself by using her name. “Look, I won’t drop you. You can trust me. If I do, you can…make me wear a tutu or something.” My joke evokes a small smile from her. It shouldn’t make me feel like a hero, like I’ve just rescued her from a dragon-guarded tower, but it does.

She reluctantly lines up in position again, ready to come at me. I count off, positioning my hands to grab her tiny hips. This time, when her chin lines up with my pecs, I grab her firmly, feeling the power from her legs shoot her off the floor. I maneuver her feather-light body above my head, where she arches her back and bends her legs at the knee. Her arms are thrown out to the sides in an elegant position, but I know she’s using the muscles from her shoulders down to her fingertips to tighten them. She must weigh all of twenty pounds, and I turn in circles holding her above my head.

When I think we’ve held the position long enough, she folds her body in half, signaling her need to come down. I slither her down my body slowly, making sure I don’t put her down too quickly. Her knees brush against my collarbone, then her waist grazes my abs, and then her breasts make contact with my pecs, before her toes reach the floor and she’s pressed snugly against me.

I see the trust and adoration sparkling in her plum orbs, and I can’t help the question that pops out of my mouth.

“Why do you want me?”

Her gaze narrows off into the distance, her eyes thoughtful as she ponders my question. “You’ve always stood out in a crowd to me, even on that playground at Mitchum Elementary. I’ve seen you loud and goofy, I’ve seen your surly and damaged. I guess I just always wanted to peel away those masks, see the real Miles underneath. I think I’d really like him.”

She’d gutted me, figured me out in thirty seconds or less.

I opened my mouth, ready to say what, I didn’t know. “I…let’s take a break. I’ll be back in an hour.”

I had to get out of there before I did something stupid. Like kiss her.