Moore To Love (32 page)

Nibbling on Lane’s lower lip, I reach below and stroke him. I bring his tip against me and urge him to come inside for the party. With one hard thrust, Lane enters me, tingles engulf my body, and my head falls back with a moan. “Yes!” I dig my fingers into his backside, pulling him toward me, meeting each plunge, rocking my hips with his. It’s intense and hot and everything I’ve been praying for.

Minutes, hours, or maybe days elapse around us as we lose ourselves in each other. In a mess of tangled hair and sweat-soaked skin, my body turns stiff and then limp as an orgasm of magical magnitude rolls through me. I’m pretty sure a unicorn just died for that, because all I can see is an explosion of rainbows and sparkly fairy dust as Lane pushes inside me once more and releases a string of curse words I’ve never heard him utter before.

I laugh when he collapses on top of me, wrapping my arms around him and relishing in our after-sex panting. Catching my breath and burrowing my fingers into Lane’s tousled hair, I almost whisper the words that are dying to escape me. Again. But again, my confession is interrupted. This time it’s the crash of a dish and a splatter of water against the tile floor of the kitchen.

“Shit!” Lane jumps up and discreetly removes the condom with his back turned toward me. In a mad dash, he manages to find his boxers and slip them back on, and then he springs to the chaos in the kitchen.

I find my own undergarments, both tossed onto the floor in a heap of crumpled lace, and run to join him.

“Oh no!” I cry, assessing the situation. A sea of sudsy water is overflowing from the sink; an unwashed dish rolls with the current of the water and cascades toward the floor.

Lane dives to catch the plate before it meets its fate with the tile, and then quickly shuts off the faucet.

The kitchen is a mess. Lane is drenched from head to toe. I’m standing in a puddle of water in nothing but a skimpy bra and thong. There’s really nothing funny about the situation, but I couldn’t contain my laughter if you paid me.

Lane spins around in slow motion and gawks. “You think this is funny?”

I take a second out of my laughing fit to study Lane and for a split instant, I think he’s actually mad. Until he grabs me by the waist with sopping wet hands and pulls me down to the floor to join him in the lake that has now formed beneath us.

“Stop! No!” I try to break free of his grip, but it’s too late. I’m covered in water and flailing around is just making me wetter. “You jerk! You didn’t have to do that.”

“This is all your fault in the first place.” Lane pins me down underneath him, straddling me, as he scoops big handfuls of water from the floor and splashes me.

“My fault?” I ask with tight-lidded eyes, trying to shield my face from the onslaught of dishwater.

“If you hadn’t made me chase you, we wouldn’t have wound up so . . . preoccupied.”

“Are you complaining about the last twenty minutes? Because I’m pretty sure that was the best twenty minutes of my life. Earth shattering, mind blowing, amazing.” I buck my hips to grind against Lane’s already stiff bulge. “In fact, I’m ready for more. Right here. Soap suds and all.”

All levity vanishes from his face as his eyes turn dark again. “Right here?”

“Right here,” I deadpan.

It doesn’t take much convincing before Lane’s pawing at me again. We’re slick from the water, our bodies slithering against each other with lubricated ease. Except of course, for the damn shirt again. It clings to his chest and the heaviness of the soaked cotton slaps against my bare stomach each time Lane rubs against me.

This time, I take control. My fingers creep down his arms and back, gripping the hem of his ruined shirt. Lane is preoccupied with my tit in his mouth so I seize the opportunity and yank the shirt over his chest, stopping when I can’t get it over his neck.

“Off. Now,” I demand.

Lane pauses as he hovers over me, and then takes a deep breath. He rises from his hunched position and slowly peels the shirt off. I watch him in awe, dying to uncover what I know has to be a model-like physique.

What I notice first is his face—apprehensive, vulnerable, exposed. What I see next, makes me curious.

“What’s that?” I ask, bluntly. His abdomen is scattered with five deep scars. One rests under his sternum, the others just at the side of his stomach, and another long, jagged line mars his belly button down to his groin.

“War wounds.”

War wounds?
What war? Did I miss something? My dumbfounded expression must say it all.

Lane dismounts me and sits up. I adjust my bra so the girls aren’t sloppily spilling out all over the place and then sit up as well, pulling my knees to my chest.

“I told you I’m not who you think I am. I didn’t want you to find out this way and I meant to tell you sooner, but I started to think it didn’t matter.
None
of this matters when I’m with you. Not the past, not the insecurities, not a single thing. I should’ve just told you while we were running one day, or during one of our get-to-know each other chats about how we grew up. But I was scared you’d see me differently once you knew.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about or how his scars have anything to do with why I’d see him differently. Maybe my brain is on overload from the unicorn killing sex or from the chill seeping into my bones from being cold, wet, and almost naked on Lane’s kitchen floor. Either way, I’m clueless. “Dude, what are you talking about? I’m lost.”

Lane stands and sloshes past me to the bathroom. He’s back before he’s actually gone, being that the apartment is so small. When he returns he’s holding two towels and a picture frame in his hands. He offers me a plush towel, I gladly accept, and we both drape the downy, white cotton around our shoulders.

He sits back down and hands me the black rimmed frame. The three young men in the photograph are strangers to me. They’re young teenagers on a camping trip. A red tent and a bonfire give that away, and the gooey marshmallows pierced with wooden sticks in each of their hands solidify it. The boy in the middle—all chunky and mowhawked—looks oddly familiar even though I’ve never seen him before.

I examine the picture, wondering what this has to do with Lane or why he’s showing it to me now and then I detect an unmistakable trait on the boy in the middle that sends my chin to the floor.

Dimples.
Those adorable dimples.

“Is this you?” I point to the chubby-cheeked, overweight boy sporting a sweaty, flushed brow and then I take another long glance at his scars. I’ve seen these before. I know what they mean. He’s had Lap Band and he didn’t tell me?

“Yes, Leni. That’s me. I hope this doesn’t change anything.”

Having plenty of experience coping with my own struggles, my own letdowns, my own insecurities, this
shouldn’t
change one damn thing. He’s still the same Lane—kind, caring, sexy, perfect—only he’s not.

He lied to me.

He kept this a secret as if it were something to be ashamed of. If he’s that embarrassed to keep this part of him from me, how am I supposed to feel about myself? The weight is a thing of the past for Lane, but it’s very much a part of
my
existing makeup
today
.

Hurt strangles me, erasing the happiness that’s taken place since I collided with that tree and let Lane into my life. Into my heart. The three letter f word that has haunted me my entire life has just tainted the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Like every other obstacle in my life, I can choose to let it define me or work through it. But in this moment, smothered with deception and uncertainty, I wish I’d fade away.

A RUSH OF OLD HURT
and pent up humiliation surge through me. My first instinct is to run. My second is to cry. Guess what I do?

“Why are you crying, Leni? Look at me.” Lane tries to pry my hands from my eyes, but I don’t budge.

“You—you, lied!”

All I can think about is Alex.
He’s not Alex
. I tell myself that over and over again. But lies
are
lies. No matter how big or small, when you find out someone you trusted, cared about, maybe even loved isn’t who they said they are—it’s a stinging slap in the face.

“Alex, you’re already in, bro. All bets are off. You can give up the act and dump the chubby chick to finally get your hands on one of the Deltas we’ve got lined up for you.” Ty, Alex’s fraternity brother, punches him in the arm and cackles.

Alex stumbles sideways and my hand is knocked loose from his grip. My heart feels like it’s bottoming out in my chest and slamming around my rib cage like a dropped bouncing ball.

I look at Alex, hoping his face will wear the same confusion as mine. I had to have heard wrong. I had to. Because the alternative would be—No! I won’t go there. Not until I know the truth. But what I’m met with leaves me with little hope.

Alex’s eyes go wide and my ears ring to the point of buzzing deafness at the degrading poison Ty’s vomited out of his vile mouth.

“Shut up, asshole,” Alex mumbles, shooing Ty away. If that’s not a dead giveaway, I don’t know what is. He’s guilty. If not by the mortified glare in his eyes or the way he’s warding Ty off like he has some disease, it’s conclusive by the pallid complexion on his face.

“How could you?” I cry, my lip trembling, my eyes so full of tears I can barely make out the small crowd of people who’ve formed around us. Five of whom are burly jerks who belong to the same brotherhood Alex has been hoping to become a member of since we started seeing each at the beginning of the semester. The same assholes who have always looked at me as if I have a third eye or who snickered behind my back when Alex and I walked past them on campus.

I should’ve known that any guy who wanted to be part of a clan run by cruel, arrogant, jerkoffs would become one himself. Or maybe he’s been just like them the entire time and I was too blinded by his charming good looks and hauntingly blue eyes to care. No, I can’t even blame Alex for this. I was blinded by my own self-doubt. I thought losing a little weight would make the world a better place to live, but I was wrong. It just made it more bearable. And I allowed myself to believe that everything was perfect because for once I had the guy I wanted.

“It’s not what you think, Leni.” Alex pulls me off to the side, away from all the gawking eyes, where we’re secluded from everyone else. Funny, now that I think of it, we always met up in some secretive way; alone in my dorm room, at a table in the furthest corner of a pub, the most desolate section of the school library.

“Don’t you dare play me for more of a fool than you already have. It’s
exactly
what I think. You’re a liar and an asshole and I’m just some stupid, pathetic, fat girl, borrowing someone else’s made-for-society image for my fifteen minutes of fame. Only this isn’t the kind of recognition I was looking for, Alex. This is—this is cruelty! I’ve never felt so low, so humiliated, so . . .” I bring my hands to my face and sob. Alex doesn’t comfort me. He doesn’t reach out to coax me or tell me I’m wrong for thinking those things about myself or for believing Ty’s words without giving him a chance to tell me they’re untrue. Instead, he backs away like a coward and gives me an insincere explanation that leaves me wishing the ground would swallow me up and help me disappear for good.