Vertical Lines (The Vert Series Book 1) (12 page)

“Oh yeah?”

She nods. “I started reading it just before I came to San Diego so I would be able to work better with the people in my study groups and such. I like to know,” she says, answering my smirk. It’s so Jordan. “It makes it easier for me to understand someone or something if I can understand how they work, how they process, how they see.”

I finish my beer and set my cup at my feet. “You don’t trust your instincts, Red?”

“My instincts tell me too many things to handle. I process better when I have concrete information.”

“And what is your
concrete information
telling you about me right now?”

Her eyes scan me, and I purposefully stay still, lazy, leaned back in my seat with my feet flat on the ground. My skin hums while her eyes sweep up and down; I know she isn’t trying to be provocative, but fuck, the way she studies me like she’s analyzing each piece of me makes me tighten with a desire greater than I have felt in a long time.

Finally, she looks into my eyes. “You’re intense, focused, driven… but even with all of the dark looks, you’re someone who cares deeply for other people. Not all people,” she says, “but those who are close to you. You protect them, take care of them, and love them enough to sacrifice for them.”

My eyes are glued to her face, and though I still don’t move a muscle, my heart is pounding in my chest. This girl… she’s identified my weaknesses, put them out into the air to surround us… and she isn’t looking at me like a failure.

But she doesn’t know everything. Not about Ashton, or Nala, or Mal and Hunter. The people I care about who are dealing with shit I can’t save them from—no matter what I do.

“Who are you, then, Red?” My voice is low, my throat aching with the pulse of desire and emotion I feel, but the words come out clear. Thank Christ. “Who is the girl who wants one thing and does another? Who is the girl who throws dinner in her brother’s lap, but won’t change her major in fear of upsetting people?”

Because I want to take care of her, too, and it’s killing me
.

“Not who, but what. Unconventional,” she says. Her smile is only half there; I tilt my head in question. “I can be both productive and creative—according to my book, this makes me unconventional and slightly difficult to understand.”

The way she says it—
difficult to understand
—like there is something wrong with her. I hate it.

I move now, leaning forward so I can cup her face in my hands, heedless of the game or anything else around us. Staring at her, those caramel eyes near-liquid, I see the girl she is, the one on my canvas at home who is all warm colors and bright ideas. The girl who inspires me as much as she makes me wonder. The same girl I’m starting to need.

“I understand you, Jordan.”

+      +      +

We don’t stay for the entire game. I know Jordan has an early class tomorrow, and though she started asking her questions again after a while, I also know she is a bit unnerved by my declaration.

So am I.

I’m not a liar. I might not like some things, I might not always give my opinion, but I’m not a guy who denies what he feels or wants because it’s easier than acknowledging them. That’s Malcolm, and it’s gotten him nowhere as far as I can tell.

When I told Jordan I understood her, I was being honest. What I left out was that every day, I think of her and want to know more. Whatever else there is, I want it. She started out as a project, and now my desire is transitioning, becoming this physical part of me until my hands tingle with the desire to know her figure like my eyes do.

Which might be why, when she turns to me in the truck to say goodbye, I’m already out of my door and heading around the front to hers. I usually park at the curb and watch her walk the lighted path to the dormitory. It stopped it from feeling like a date. Not tonight.

I open her door and reach for her hand to help her down. When she steps to the curb, I swing it shut and turn with her, keeping her hand in mine while we walk toward the building.

Her brain is racing—even if I didn’t know her expressions, I would be able to sense it. She’s stealing small glances at me from the corner of her eye, and I know she’s wondering if she should be concerned. But she doesn’t tell me I don’t need to walk her, and I’m grateful she’s calm enough to acknowledge that this is the first time I have taken her all the way to her building, which means I’m consciously choosing to do it.

“Thank you for the game and dinner,” she says when we’re a few steps away from the door. I nod, stopping with her. She fiddles with her key card while I watch her. “I talked to Nala about going to Malcolm’s party next weekend. She said
yes
.” Her voice is clear, no shaking or tremors, but her fingers are tapping on her key, turning it over and over.

“I know—she texted me.”

“Oh, good. Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you then?” I nod, but when she turns to unlock the door I stop her, placing my hand on her waist.

Before she can ask, I step forward and curve my free hand under her hair to cup her neck. Her eyes widen, and her hands go to my chest. The sound of her key card falling to the ground barely registers with me when I feel the flat of her palms on my chest.

I bring her a little closer, easing her against me so her hands are trapped between our bodies. Angling my head, eyes on hers the entire time, I lower my mouth and stop a breath before our lips touch.

I wait for her to say
yes
, to give me the nod, a signal, anything that tells me she wants what I want. My body wants her so much, I physically ache, and I know she can feel me hard against her stomach, but I don’t move. This chance—it’s hers, and I won’t take it from her.

My reward is greater than I imagined. One minute we’re sharing breath, each of our hearts pounding, and the next she has raised on her toes and slammed her lips against mine, her fingers curling into the fabric of my T-shirt.

It takes me a second to catch up, and in that time she starts to pull back, unsure. “No,” I mutter, applying pressure to her neck and bringing her lips back to mine. This time when our lips touch, I drink her in, moving her head to the angle I want, diving my tongue inside her lips when they part. I can’t get enough—the spark I felt earlier is now a raging inferno, a need so great I haven’t satiated it by tasting her; I’ve awakened it.

Her hands creep up from my shirt to my shoulders, hesitant, and then they grip my hair and I groan. She pulls them away immediately. “Come back,” I say against her lips, moving to her jaw, her throat, and then back, inhaling her scent and flavor.

I try to remember that we’re outside of her dorm. In public. I want to push her against the wall and take, to fill myself with her and not come up for air until my hunger has faded, but she’s not ready for that.

I pull away far enough to look at her face. Her eyes are closed, her lips are swollen and wet, and her breathing is shallow. When her heavy lids open, her eyes are clouded and wide.

The need to crush her against me and kiss her again is heavy. I loosen my grip and step back, keeping my hands on her waist until I’m sure she is steady. Leaning down, I scoop up the forgotten key card and place it in her palm, curling her fingers around it.

“I’ll wait for you to get inside.”

She nods, turning to leave. After taking one step, she turns back, reaching for my hand. It’s brief—the contact and the light kiss she stretches onto her toes to give me—but a tremor rocks through my entire body nonetheless.

“Thank you for tonight, Brooklyn.”

She brushes her fingers over my hand one last time before letting it go and unlocking the door. I watch her the whole time, even after she has disappeared behind the door and all I can see is her retreating form through the glass. I watch her until she’s through another door and out of sight, and only then do I close my eyes and drop my chin on my chest.

Our first kiss was rushed, the second full of fire and want. But that last kiss, the sweet, almost friend-like brushing of her lips over mine… it has left me shaking and confused. For the first time in years, I want to hold someone and know she’s going to be there when I wake up.

Not
someone
—Jordan.

Chapter 21

Jordan

Parties aren’t something I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve been to my fair share—okay, maybe not a
fair share
, but a few. Usually, I go, I stand and talk, I leave when the first person throws up. The party Nala and I go to is both less and more than what I expected.

Rather than the glamorous home overlooking the ocean, where previous parties I attended took place, we’re at an apartment complex lovingly referred to as the
Dogpatch
, and unlike the strategic A-list invites high school parties in my area included, there appears to be no regulation on who can attend this one. People come and go through two of the apartments which sit side-by-side, and I wonder fleetingly if the entire complex is college kids. If not, we’re sure to be busted soon.

Nala and I step inside one of the open doors, chosen only because it had less people milling around in the doorway. A strange, oddly-sweet yet kind of disgusting smell hits my nose, and I glance at my roommate.

“Are we sure this was the party everyone was talking about?”

Grinning, she links her arm through mine. “There won’t be Cristal, but six-dollar beer cups and a lot of atmosphere.” She wrinkles her nose. “And weed.”

I grimace, and she raises her brow. “Number whatever on your list… stop being scared? Remember that?”

“I thought that’s why I started standing on my paddleboard.” The look she gives me makes me laugh. “All right, all right. Lead the way.”

People head nod and check us out as we weave between them. I think they mostly check out Nala because she’s wearing a shirt dress without shape that ends several inches under her bottom. She has her trusty Birks on, and somehow still manages to look sexy. I look a little less casual in my white cigarette jeans and red-and-white chevron-print razorback. My ankle-strap stilettos are nude and sure to be killing me by the end of the night, but the added height is worth it.

We buy cups of flat beer, and somewhere within the first hour, Nala calls winner of the beer-pong game. I grimace when she tells me I’m her partner, and then I step up to the Ping-Pong table and learn the intricacies of throwing an over-touched white orb into a half-full cup. The one intricacy being
don’t miss
because when they make it, you drink your mostly-flat beer.

“Red, you’re not very good at this.”

I glare at Nala—or think I do. Really, I can’t quite tell if I scowl or if my face is still stuck in a grimace from the last gulp of beer I just drank down.

“I warned you.”

“Did you? Or did you just say you’d never played before?”

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

She shakes her head. “Nah, you could have been a natural. You’re not,” she says with a grin, “but you could have been.”

We lose handily, though Nala hit some pretty great shots that kept us in the game longer than most. The boys we lose to offer to get us new beers, but we decline. However nice, open cups and strangers are definitely not on my list of to-dos.

“I need to use the restroom,” I say. Nala cranes her neck and points down a short hallway. “The line doesn’t look too bad. You go; I’ll get the beer, and you can hold them when I go.”

We part and I make my way through the pack of bodies, smiling politely even when I dislodge the stray hands that make their way to my arms, shoulders, and hips. No one is aggressive, but it makes me uncomfortable and slightly claustrophobic to be so close to so many people who have zero personal-space knowledge. I sigh when I reach the small line which leads to the bathroom.

Only one girl is ahead of me. When she walks inside, she smiles at me woozily, and I return it, linking my fingers and standing close to the wall while I wait. It’s only partially secluded in the hallway, but it’s enough to find relief from the loud noise.

I take out my phone, unlocking it, and pulling up the text message I have read at least twenty times in the past twelve hours.

Tell me I made the list.

Brooklyn sent it not even a full two hours after he dropped me off last night. After he kissed me. After
I
kissed him. After we kissed each other senseless.

It’s the first time he’s really teased. He’s always so serious, so observant and intense. When my phone lighted up with what he’d written, it made me smile, as much from the memory as from the fact that he was flirting with me.

My cheeks heat and I bring my palm to one of them to cool it down. It does nothing, especially since I’m remembering what it felt like to have him hold me so tight, so secure, while he
devoured
my mouth in a way that was utterly delicious and nothing like the few kisses I’d been given before. No, Brooklyn wasn’t some unsure, preppy high schooler doing his best to impress me and make himself feel good.

Brooklyn is a man, and when he touched me, it was for both of us.

The tipsy girl who went into the bathroom before me comes out and I walk in, hurrying through my business and trying not to think about how dirty everything is, and just how many people have used it tonight. When I open the door, I come to a screeching halt.

Nala is standing there, but she isn’t alone. She’s holding onto a tall, painfully-thin girl who is doing her best to push Nala away even when she stumbles to stand.

“Told you ‘m fine.”

The girl’s words are slurred and her head lolls on her shoulders. Nala drops the beer in her hand, letting it splash all over the floor, and grips the girl’s arms.

“Ash, you’re not fine; you’re wasted. And you’re alone.”

I step forward to help—at the same moment, a voice calls down the short hallway. A voice I know too well.

“Ash? Baby, where’d you go?”

Mason turns the corner, his face creasing into a glare when he spots Nala and Ash. “The fuck?”

He steps in and removes Ash from Nala, his arms around her while she leans against him. He’s drunk, but still able to stand relatively still. He has not noticed me, and I watch in rapture as he gently wipes Ash’s dark hair back from her face. His fingers stroke her skin reverently, like she’s a fine treasure he knows he has to be gentle with.