The Wager (27 page)

“I can’t,” he said through clenched teeth.

Grandma pushed to her, feet knocking an entire pitcher of ice water into Jake’s lap. His eyes bulged out of his head as she leaned over so only he and Char could hear. “You’re welcome.”

“I want to die.” This from Jake.

“You clumsy boy, go change your pants,” Grandma ordered. “Char, why don’t you get us some more water from the kitchen?”

She didn’t have to be told twice.

Cursing, Jake threw down his napkin and chased after her.

Shoes off, she was able to run across the grass. Once she was in the house she stole a glance behind her. Jake was gaining on her. The look on his face was predatory.

With a squeal she ran up the stairs to the bedroom, just as his strong arms came around her, pushing her farther into the room.

“Naughty girl. I’ll make you pay for that.”

She turned in his arms and licked his chin like she had her soufflé. “You promise?”

“Strip.” He released her and walked over to the bed, slowly sinking down into it. “Now.”

“Demanding.” Char put her hands on her hips. “Aren’t we?”

“Yeah.” Jake leaned back on his elbows. “The way I see it, you owe me. Not only did I do a naughty dance for you, with chaps might I add, but you made me suffer through dessert, while my great aunt, the virgin one, you know her, told me I needed to be spanked.”

Char laughed.

“Not funny,” Jake groaned. “Most awkward moment of my life.”

“Before or after Grandma cooled you off?” Char asked.

“If you want me to be able to perform, ever, you won’t mention that again.” Jake swore.

Char fumbled with the straps of her dress. “I remember.”

“Remember?” Jake’s eyes were trained on her fingers as she toyed with the straps pulling them further down her body. “What do you remember?”

“Us.” Char let the dress fall to the ground and stepped out of it. “I remember our night together. I lied. I told Beth I didn’t. I told you it wasn’t good. I was just trying to make you feel bad.”

“Hmm.” Jake stood and slowly approached her. “I deserved it.”

“I know.”

“So… on a scale of one to ten…” Jake reached out and touched her shoulders, running his hands down her arms. “One being the worst moment of your life, and ten being, best…”

“Six.” Char said honestly. “To be fair you’d had tequila.”

“Damn.” Jake said. “I must have really been losing my touch.”

“I had nothing to compare it to.”

Jake’s hands froze on her arms. “You mean you had no one to compare it to? Or you decided not to compare me because I was that bad?”

And there it was. Part of the reason she’d lost her heart to him, then and forever. “I um, sort of, don’t have anyone to compare it to.”

Jake swore and touched his forehead to hers. “I’m a jackass. I didn’t know. I mean, like you said, lots of tequila and—”

“It’s all right.” Char kissed him softly.

“No.” He jerked back. “It’s not all right. It’s a damn shame; that’s what it is.” Before Char could say anything more he’d lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. “It should be life altering. Earth moving. Mind numbing. It should be about feeling every single touch of my fingertips.” He trailed his fingers from the tip of her bra all the way down the middle of her stomach. “Your muscles should constrict every time my breath fans over your face. Your body should literally arch toward me, it should beg for my touch, and mine should be selfless enough to give you what you need before I even begin to think about myself.”

Char whimpered as he pulled his shirt over his head and hovered over her. “Sex can be mindless or it can be mindful. It can become habitual, or it can be just about getting off. It can be entirely selfish. But I’ve decided I don’t want to have sex anymore.”

“What?” Some of the passion dissipated from Char’s consciousness. “What do you mean?”

“I want to make love,” Jake whispered. “With you. I don’t want it to be purely physical. I need it to be spiritual, because with you, it’s so much more, Char. It’s everything. Maybe to you it will be something else, but for me…” Jake shook his head and kissed her hard on the mouth. “I’ve jumped out of the boat. Come with me?”

“Already there.” Char wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to cover her body. She could only imagine how amazing being with him was going to be after that speech.

A virgin. She had been a virgin. He’d used her as a one-night stand, and in the process could have ruined the perfect girl. The most amazing girl, his soul mate.

Jake placed a tender kiss on her forehead and pulled back.

“Where are you going?” Char asked.

“Nowhere.” He said, and he meant it. He wasn’t going anywhere, not unless she was by his side. He dropped his pants to the floor and approached the bed. Char’s eyes took him in. Damn, he could watch her all day. Her chestnut hair spilled over her lacy red bra. She did buy some lingerie. She wore it well, too well, if the black spots invading his vision were any indication. He was going to lose his damn mind if he couldn’t have her—now.

He knelt over her on the bed. “I have something to tell you.”

“Oh yeah?” Char trembled beneath his touch. He reached for her hand and sucked on her finger.

“I’ve been jealous of this finger for the past hour. Hell, I was jealous of whipped cream.”

She moaned. “And now?”

“Now, I want to lick all of you.”

He placed his hands on her hips. “Every last inch… Nothing goes untouched…”

“Nothing?” Her eyebrows arched.

“Nothing,” he repeated, taking her mouth captive. He pressed her into the bed and kissed her soundly, drinking her in, and in that moment realized her taste would be forever etched onto his person. Everything about her was the perfect match for him; he’d just been too blind to see it before. And now, he was never letting her go.

His lips met hers softly as he pressed his body against her warmth, but at her sigh he pulled back. “What’s wrong?”

“What changed?”

Words wouldn’t come. So not only had he officially lost his game, but he was unable to communicate one of the most necessary elements of his existence.

Char’s eyes fluttered closed. When they opened again, moisture had pooled in their depths.

Jake held her face in his hands and said very softly, “I did. I changed.”

Her brow furrowed.

“It was me, not you. You’ve always been constant. Whether you wanted to stab me or kiss me, you’ve never changed. It’s me; I’m different.”

“Just like that?” Char sounded skeptical.

Damn if he didn’t want to just lose himself in her first and then have the serious conversation, but he knew better than anyone that women weren’t wired that way. So, with self-control he knew he rarely possessed, he pulled back and sat on the bed, in nothing but his boxers, and waited for her to sit up too.

When she did, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the bed, carrying her to the window seat where they could look out at the lake, out at all his memories—his past.

Once she was tucked in his lap, he pulled a blanket from a basket on the floor and wrapped it around them. The feel of her skin caused his entire body to tingle as they sat tangled on the chair, legs entwined. He put his chin on her head and wrapped his arms around her ribs.

“It was over there, by the dock.”

Char exhaled. “What was?”

“My first time doing drugs.”

She stiffened.

Jake swallowed. “I was a kid—stupid, young, and way too cocky for my own good. I know what you’re thinking; some things never change, but I can’t even imagine what I would have been like had he not found me.”

“He?”

“Bill.” Jake gripped her hands together. “Kacey’s dad. I drank so much that night. I was lucky to be alive; I kept drinking because I kept snorting cocaine. I felt invincible, like I could fly. I mean, I wasn’t even tired. I just wanted to stay up all night and party. I felt like I was an adult, that I could handle it.”

“What happened?”

Jake laughed. “Well, my parents were gone for the weekend. I’d stayed home with Travis, but he had gone out with friends, leaving me all by myself. I threw a party. Just a few of us. Every single person was either a senior or older. I thought I was such a bad ass.”

“Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “My dad had asked Bill to check on us during the weekend. Obviously I didn’t know that. He found me just after I’d jumped off the end of the dock and somehow hit my head on the boat tied up at the end. All my so-called friends were too high or wasted to notice. But Bill had just pulled up, after seeing the entire thing. He ran out there and jumped in the water. He saved my life.”

Char’s grip on his hands tightened. “I guess—you’d think after that huge come-to-Jesus moment, you’d have changed your ways? I don’t get it.”

“I did.” Jake shrugged. “For a while. I got good grades, played every sport possible, apologized profusely to Bill. He only told his wife, never my parents or Kacey. It bonded us, I looked up to him, I respected him because it was the first time in my teenage years an adult had treated me as an adult, so I wanted him to be just as proud of me as he was of Travis and Kace.”

Shaking, Jake closed his eyes and murmured a curse. Why was this so damn hard? Maybe it was because it was the first time he’d said everything out loud, and it was to someone he actually cared about, someone he loved. And in baring his soul, he realized how terrifying it was to actually love another person. In loving someone you gave them all the power to hurt you, to reject you. And he knew, deep down that the minute he revealed who he truly was, the mask would slip, and it would just be him, Jake Titus, a broken man. In the end, would she still want him? Or leave him the way he deserved?

“In college,” he continued, “Kace and I were inseparable. I know you know the entire sordid story. I mean, I’m pretty sure it was you who continued to send me nasty text messages for an entire year from an unknown number.”

Char laughed.

“Right.” Jake grinned. “We slept together in college… but that night. Shit, I knew what I was doing. I told her I was young and stupid, but a guy knows. I just didn’t care. I knew it would change us, I knew it would change her, but I still wanted it. I still wanted her even though I knew it wouldn’t move past that night. I think in the back of my mind I always knew we were better as friends. Bill had told me over and over again that guys and girls couldn’t be friends. I think he was warning me that, no matter what, hormones take over. And when you mix alcohol with hormones, well…” Hell, he hated telling her this part. “Kacey doesn’t remember much, but I do.”

“What do you mean?” Char asked in a small voice.

Well, here went nothing. “We drank the same amount, but she’s so much smaller than me, she remembers having sex, she remembers it being awkward, but I don’t think she remembers crying. Or the fact that about halfway through she asked me to stop, she said she didn’t want to disappoint her dad…”

Char turned to face him. “You didn’t stop, did you?”

“No.” Jake almost choked on the word. “I told her it was fine, that it was normal to be afraid. I…” Jake closed his eyes. “I told her I loved her. And that since I loved her it was okay.”

“And then you left.” Char finished the story.

“Like the ass I was. I left.” Jake sighed. “I left her dorm and went straight to a sorority house. I felt so damn guilty I just wanted to be numb; I wanted to disappear into it. So I drank my ass off, woke up in some other girl’s bed, and then found out a few hours later that at the exact time I was betraying Kacey and her father… her parents had both died in the accident.”

They were silent for a few minutes, until Jake added, “The worst part? It was a crossroads of sorts. I could have easily run to her, asked for her forgiveness, mourned with her. Hell, I could have been the friend she deserved. Instead, I blamed myself. I felt like it was my fault they died, that if I could have just stopped when she asked, they would still be alive.”

“Jake.” Char cupped his face. “That’s a lie and you know it. You couldn’t have prevented that by your actions, just like you couldn’t have caused it.”

“I think I know that now.” Jake said. “But I still felt like shit, it always haunted me, and honestly it was just too easy to ignore it, to embrace the mentality that I could live hard and do whatever. I wanted to be as far away from Kacey and everything she represented as I could.”

“She trusted you with her heart—”

“And I broke it.” Jake finished. “Into a million tiny pieces. And when given the chance to fix it, I stepped on the pieces, pushing them farther into the ground, destroying everything our friendship was.”

Char was staring at his chest, not moving.

“What are you thinking?” He whispered, knowing full well he sounded like a woman, but not caring in the least.

“I’m sad for you.” Char trailed her finger down his chest. “I’m sad for that fourteen-year–

old boy who’s still struggling to be the man he knows he’s supposed to be.”

“I am.” Jake reached for her face. “I am that man. I want to be that man. You make me want to be him.”

Char looked into his eyes, searching, waiting.

“Travis gave me something today.” He gently moved her away and walked over to the dresser; he opened the first drawer and pulled out the note.

“What’s this?” She took it from his hands.

“A note, from Bill.”

At Char’s gasp, Jake kept talking. “Travis was under strict instructions to give it to me under one condition.”

“What?”

“I fall in love.”

The letter dropped from Char’s hands and fluttered onto the floor. “Do you mean it?”

In two strides, Jake was in front of her. He lifted her into his arms and kissed her mouth, drinking every part of her in. “I do, I love you, and I’m sorry that I come with baggage. I’m sorry I have a past, I’m sorry I kissed a girl and made her cry, I’m sorry that the girl I made cry was you, I’m sorry I haven’t been the man I was created to be, but with you, Char…” Another hungry kiss. “I am him. You make me him, because you make me believe I can be.”

Char nodded as a few tears streamed down her face. “What’s it say?” She pointed down at the note.