Rule (14 page)

I rubbed my forehead where I felt
the beginning of a migraine starting, she brought them on faster than anything
else.  “So what if it does?”

“Oh Shaw, when are you going to
outgrow this silly crush?”

“Mom I’m starting to get a headache
can this wait until another time?”

She was silent for a long minute
and I could feel the waves of censure over the phone.

“I’m going to invite the Davenports
to dinner.  You need to be there.”

“No.  Not if Gabe is going to be
there.”

“Yes, you will be there.  Do not
forget your father and I pay for your tuition.”

Great yet another parent that was
extorting me, boy was I lucky.  “Yeah, fine, whatever.”  I didn’t even say bye
I just chucked the phone under the other pillow and hit the lights.  I had no
idea how Rome thought I could fix anyone, be good for anyone, I didn’t even
have control over my own life and it was making me physically ill.

***

I spent the rest of the week and weekend
being a good college student.  I studied every chance I got, finished my lab
project, got a head start on one of my papers that was due at midterm and even
managed to squeeze in some help for Ayden since she was struggling with I-Chem
and I had breezed through it.  I was working on a piece for one of my
prerequisite classes, a speech on why assisted suicide should be legal, super
fun stuff, but the apartment was too quiet and I was tired of ignoring my phone
every time it rang fearing it would be one of my parents or Gabe so I packed my
laptop up and went down to Pikes Perk to finish it.  Ayden had texted that I
should just come to the bar because it was slow, but I needed a less
stimulating environment and a coffee shop full of hipsters seemed to be just
the ticket.  I had a pile of research in front of me and a caramel latte
cooling by my elbow, I was so into what I was doing that I didn’t notice the
chair across from me at the little table getting pulled back until the metal
legs craped across the floor.

In fact I was so intent on the
paperwork spread out before me it wasn’t until a familiar hand with the snake
tattoo and his name across the knuckles pushed shut the top of my computer that
I realized I had company.  I blinked in surprise and looked up to find those
arctic colored eyes watching me intently.  He was still rocking the mohawk,
only now it was a shocking red and he looked ridiculously good in a tight long
sleeved t-shirt and jeans that were a little baggy.  I didn’t bother to hide
the fact that I was openly checking him out.

“What if I hadn’t saved any of that?”

“We’ve met, remember?  I know you
well enough to know you probably save after every sentence.”

It was every paragraph but
whatever.  “This is kind of out of the way for you, what are you doing here?” 
I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in exactly ten days.  The idea that he had
purposely sought me out just seemed too farfetched to be believed so I scolded
myself not to even begin to read into his sudden appearance.

“I actually went by the bar.  I ran
into your roommate and she said told me you were probably here working on
homework, Shaw we need to talk.”  I had never heard him sound so serious, it
made me nervous.  I needed something to do with my hands so I picked up my
drink and tried to hide behind it.

“I don’t think we do.”  I was
halfway certain he was going to say something that was going to make me want to
chuck the lukewarm coffee at his head.

He raised the eyebrow that had the
double silver bars in and leaned forward so that he was resting his elbow on
his knees and staring directly into my eyes.  There were interesting shadows
dancing and flashing in the silver depths of his that I didn’t know what to
make of, but he had never looked more enticing than he did in that moment.

“Come on.  You really think things
can go down like they did and we just pretend like it never happened?”

“Why not?  It’s what we’ve been
doing and it seems to be working just fine.”

“Shaw,” he sounded exasperated. 
“We are not going to have seriously awesome sex that of which just happens to
be your first time and not talk about it.  First off I want to know what you
were doing with Remy for all those years if you weren’t sleeping together, that
just doesn’t make any sense.  I also want to know why you took off the next
morning, you didn’t even me a chance to try and talk to you.”

I set the coffee down and pushed
some of my hair out of my face, I leaned towards him so that I was almost in
the exact same position he was.  We were so close I could see each of his
eyelashes as they brushed against his cheek when he blinked.

“I told you guys until I was blue
in the face that Remy and I were just friends.  We never, ever had any kind of
romantic relationship.  Our friendship was deep, it was powerful and intimate
in a way Neanderthal males fail to understand, but it was never physical and I
can’t believe you thought I would stick around after just to have you rush me
out the door the next morning.  I’ve seen you in action more times than I care
to admit Rule, I wasn’t going to be another one of your morning after
headaches.  I have more pride than that.”

“But you were going to hold onto
your virginity for twenty years and then just give it up to me for no apparent
reason?”  He sounded slightly put out which made grin.

“I had my reasons Rule.”

“And those would be?”

“For me to know.  Look I didn’t ask
you for anything after, I don’t expect anything from you so can’t we just get
over it?”

“No we can’t.”

I reeled back a little bit and
frowned at him.  “What?  Why not?  We’ve known each other forever; this is just
a thing that happened.”  I flipped my wrist in a way I hoped was dismissive and
went stock still as he grabbed my hand in his much larger one.  I stared
fascinated as the tattooed digits linked with my own.

“See this thing that happened,” his
voice dropped a few octaves and I was suddenly acutely aware that the coffee
shop was full and that for whatever reason we had garnered enough interest from
the fellow patrons that several nearby tables were watching our interaction
with rapt attention.  “It wasn’t just some insignificant event that we can just
ignore, believe me I tried.  I went out Friday and met a smoking hot redhead.” 
I felt my face fold into a scowl as I tried to pull away from him.  He smiled
at me and used my trapped hand to pull me even closer.  “Sadly it took maybe
five minutes to realize that I was trying to use one girl to get another off my
mind so I thought Saturday I would try for a blond or maybe a brunette, hell
maybe both because my head was all twisted up by a chick it shouldn’t be.”  I
tugged on my hand but he just pulled me closer still so that he was practically
whispering in my ear and that I was almost sitting on his lap.  I had to use my
free hand to brace myself on his hard thigh.  It was way too intimate, way too
familiar to touch him this way when I was trying to put distance between us and
he was telling me about trying to take other girls to bed.  “So Nash and I went
out and there were redheads and there were brunettes and there was even a
super-hot chick that looked kinda like Pink but you think any of them did it
for me?  No, Shaw not one because they weren’t fucking you and ever since you
walked out on Sunday all I’ve been thinking of is you.  Now why is that?”

His words made me shiver from the
inside out.  “Because it was new, because we have history and it makes it
harder for you to keep me faceless and nameless, I don’t know Rule.”

He lifted a hand and ran his thumb
across the rise of my cheek.  I made my breath catch and my heart start to trip
over itself.

“Whatever the reason it matters
Shaw.  It matters a lot.”

“What are you trying to say Rule?”

“I don’t know, all I know is other
girls aren’t you and that isn’t cutting it for me so I think we need to figure
out what’s going on between us.”

I shook my head a little and a
silver flare lit up his pale gaze.  “I’m not going to be one of many.  Like I
said I had my reasons for letting things happen the way they did, but if you
think I’m signing up to be a bed filler because no one else is fitting the bill
right now you are sadly mistaken.  I know you Rule; I’ve known you since you
first figured out girls were more complicated than boys and you’ve never wanted
to put the work in.”

The feather light sweep of that
thumb across my cheek almost had me melting into a puddle at his booted feet. 
“So this time I will, we’ll hangout, do shit together, I mean we’ve known each
other forever but I honestly don’t really know anything about you.  Come on
Shaw what do you really have to lose?”

Not my heart because he already had
it even though he didn’t know it.  “So you want to like date?”

He laughed.  “I’m not really the
dating type but I swear that while we’re trying to figure out what’s going on
that I’ll keep it in my pants.  No screwing around, no other girls.  I owe it
to you and to me to see what’s here or if it was just a fluke.”  He sounded so
sincere; he looked as serious and as determined to make me believe what he was
saying as I had ever seen.

I cleared my throat and bit my
bottom lip a little.  Sure it was what I had dreamed of, Rule suddenly
realizing I was a girl and wanting to be with me.  Granted in my fantasy that
always came with his profession of undying love and devotion, but in reality
his curiosity and a promise to at least feel things out was probably as good as
I was ever going to get.  I didn’t know how much I trusted him, but I had
always, always wanted him and it just wasn’t in me to turn that down when it
was being offered up on a silver platter.

“If we do this; hangout, spend time
together your parents, my parents, Rome none of them are going to like it very
much.”

“Who cares?”

I guess I did but I always was the
always the only one to worry about that stuff.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

I breathed out a soft breath and as
it whispered across his mouth he briefly closed his eyes so I did the only
thing that was left to do, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his.  It
wasn’t the same desperation as it had been the last time, there was no panic
that he would change his mind, no years upon years of pent up desire and
frustration, there was no regret that it was only going to be a one night
thing  Just the sweet press of my lips against his and the soft bite of that
lip ring into my lower lip.  Kissing Rule would always be uniquely different
from kissing anyone else, there was just something about it that put it in a
class all its own.  I felt his lips turn up into a grin as audible sighs from
several of the tables around us were heard.  He pulled back and tapped a finger
on the tip of my nose.

I sat back in my chair and cleared
my throat.  “Well then.”

He barked out a laugh.  “Yeah, at
least that part of it seems to be a no-brainer.”

I shifted in my seat and motioned
absently to the work still sprawled across the table between us.  “As nice as
this little visit was I have to finish this presentation.”

A quick flash of disappointment
blazed across his eyes but he hid it behind that easy grin.  “When do you work
this weekend?”

“I work all weekend, but I’m first
out Saturday night, I just have to be in by ten on Sunday morning.”

“Busy girl.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“So this hanging out thing might be
harder than I thought?”

He said it light heartedly but I
knew Rule, he was an instant gratification kind of guy.  If my tight schedule
made it hard for us to spend time together I had no illusions that he would
wait around for me to get free, he would move on to something easier and more
manageable.

“I’ll be out around ten on Saturday
and usually I’m out by seven on Sunday, the Sunday shift is optional I just
picked it up because we stopped going to Brookside and I figured I might as
well make a little extra money.”

“My buddy Jet is playing at
Cerberus this weekend, why don’t you grab your roommate and come hangout
Saturday night?”

“What kind of music is it?” 
Cerberus had a pretty rowdy reputation in town.  It was located in the
warehouse district and had been shut down more than once for one thing or
another.  It wasn’t the kind of place I would normally consider spending time,
in fact it was the kind of place I normally avoided at all costs just on the
off chance I would run into someone I knew and they would rat me out to my
parents, but if I was going to commit to trying to spend time with this boy
that I had wanted forever, then my horizons were going to have to expand.

“Metal.”

I snorted a little.  “Ayden is from
Kentucky, she likes Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.  I don’t know that I
could wrangle her into that.”

“They’re actually really good, they
went on tour with a pretty famous band last year, besides Ayden seems like a
pretty cool chick I bet she would go just to be your wingman.  If she doesn’t
come just come alone, I won’t leave you hanging.”

“What about Rome?”

“He has to go to Fort Carson for
the weekend.  He has to set up meetings with his VA counselor.  He’s having a
rough time since he isn’t healing as fast as he thought he would be.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I’m not going to hide this from
anyone Shaw, if you want to play those kind of games maybe you need to rethink
whether this is something you really want to do or not.”

I grabbed his forearm and let the
tips of my fingers dig into the body of the snake that was marked there.  “No,
I’m not going to hide, just don’t make me look like an idiot Rule.  This
matters.”

“It matters to me too, Casper.”  He
climbed to his feet so that he was towering over me.  He bent down and pressed
a soft kiss to the crown of my head.  “By the way you look good in jeans.  Come
to the show Saturday.”