When Stars Collide (Light in the Dark #2) (11 page)

We take our seats and both immediately slide our menus to the edge of the table.

Thea reaches up and pulls her hair from the ponytail, shaking out the longer strands. 

“I need a nap,” she declares, rolling her neck.

“Me too,” I agree. 

“But first we should pick up some things for Prue.”

I nod in agreement. “Yeah, we’re going to need a lot of stuff.”

She props her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. Her eyes are tired but they shine with something I’d like to think is happiness—because selfishly I want to think that she’s happy because she’s with me, that
I
make her happy. 

“What all do you think we’ll need?” she asks, wrinkling her nose. “I know nothing about having a dog.”

I laugh and tap my finger against the table. “Well, for starters, we’ll need a collar and name tag. A leash. Toys. Food. Bowls.”

She holds up a hand. “I get the idea.”

I grin as the waitress comes by to take our order. Once she leaves, I clasp my hands together and look across the table at Thea. “You’re beautiful.” I don’t know what makes me say it—in fact, the words seem to fall out of my mouth without me even thinking about them, but they’re still true.

Thea looks at me in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? With my dirty hair and clothes I slept in I’m sure I’m the furthest thing from beautiful at the moment.”

I shake my head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Beauty is in the chaos—in those little imperfect moments where we just
are
.”

She purses her lips, fighting laughter, but after a moment, she can’t hold it back anymore. “You sound like an infomercial or maybe like a poet. You really break the stereotype for jocks, and I kind of dig it.” She winks at me.

I chuckle. “You dig it, huh?” I smile in thanks at the waitress when she sets our glasses in front of us. I’m more than grateful to have something to drink. 

“Yeah, I do. Even if you are a pretty big dork at the end of the day.” She shrugs, taking a sip of her water.

“A dork? What makes you say that?”

She gives me a look that says I’ve clearly lost my mind. “You read
The Great Gatsby
for fun the other day and before that you were reading
Hamlet
. You’re a dork.”

“Well, you’ve got me there,” I agree.

She smiles and her laughter fills the air. Making her smile and laugh is one of my favorite things, and I’ll never grow tired of it. 

Our food is brought out and we grow quiet, too hungry to talk. I stuff my face with eggs and bacon, barely pausing to breathe. Apparently, sleeping in the vet’s office makes you ravenous. 

We finish eating, pay for our meal, and head down the road to the nearest pet store to get everything we need.

I push the cart and Thea strolls along beside me. “What about this?” She picks up some sort of purple rope toy.

“Put it in the cart.”

She looks at me, fighting laughter, and twists the rope around her fingers. “You’ve said that about the last five toys I’ve asked you about.”

I shrug. “I don’t know what Prue will like so we have to get a bit of everything.”

“All right.” She drops the rope in the cart. It joins the pile of balls, a squeaky bone, some sort of Frisbee thing, and a Chewbacca chew toy. She picks up a few more random toys and adds them in before we start down the aisle with leashes and collars.

I pale. “Why are there so many choices?” I pick up the one nearest me, a plain black collar, and ask, “This works, right?”

She snatches the collar from my hands and puts it back on the display. “That’s so boring, Xander. You can do better than that. She’s a girl. Pick something
girly
.”

“You pick then.” I sweep my hand to encompass the aisle. 

She shakes her head. “She’s your dog. You should choose.”

“She’s
our
dog,” I remind her. 

She laughs. “Then we’ll pick
together
.”

She moves in front of me and scans the aisle before picking three collars. “I like these, which is your favorite?”

I appraise them. One is pink with a flower thing on it, another is purple polka dots, and the last one has daisies on it. I point to the last. “That one seems more like Prue.”

Thea nods. “That was my favorite too.” She puts the others back and grabs the matching leash, dropping both items in our quickly filling cart.

We move to the dog food aisle, and end up asking for help since I have no fucking idea what kind of dog food to get, and then we head to the checkout where we also pay for a nametag.

Once we have that, we load everything in the truck. I know we should head home, but instead, I swing back by the vet. I feel bad for poor Prue there all by herself. It would have to be scary.

“They’re going to think you’re a psycho,” Thea tells me when I park in the lot.

I shrug. “I don’t care. Prue’s more important than what people think of me. Besides, I want her to have one of her new toys.”

I hop out of the truck and open the back door, rummaging through the bags to find what I want. I pull out the little brown bear toy and head inside with it.

“Hi,” I say politely to the new lady manning the front desk. “I’m Prue’s new owner. I just wanted to drop this off since they said she’d have to stay the night.”

She takes the bear. “I’ll make sure she gets this.”

“Is she doing okay?” I ask.

She nods. “She’s sleeping, but doing fine. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Thanks.” I tap my finger against the counter before heading back to the car. I know it might seem silly, since twenty-four hours ago I didn’t even know this dog, but I already care about her. 

I slide into the car and Thea smiles at me. For a moment, my heart stops because this girl … this girl owns me. Heart, body, and soul, I’m hers and she doesn’t even know it. 

“Home?” she asks.

“Home,” I echo.

I know she’s talking about a place, but I’m talking about her. 

I collapse into bed, exhausted. I haven’t done much today so there’s no real explanation for my exhaustion. I’m still marveling at the fact that we have a dog now. I couldn’t even keep my hamster alive when I was ten—poor Brownie, may he rest in peace—so I doubt I can do much better with a dog. Hopefully, Xander will be better at it than me. 

I roll onto my side and smile at the moon shining through the window and the bright stars beyond.

When I was little, I was obsessed with stars. I thought if I grew tall enough I could reach up and grab them, but it didn’t take long for me to learn that the stars would always be unattainable. Sometimes, the greatest things in life are only meant to be seen and not obtained because once you have something it’s no longer as powerful to you. 

The door to the adjoining bathroom cracks open and Xander steps into my room. My breath catches and I think
maybe
I was wrong, because right now I have Xander and he still holds just as much power over me as he did before.

“Scoot over,” he whispers into the dark.

I slide to the other side of the bed and he dives under the covers. The bed bounces and I laugh softly as I roll closer to him and basically land on top of him. I start to pull away but he reaches up, touching his fingers to my cheek. 

“I love it when you laugh,” he murmurs. “I love it even more when you’re laughing because of me.”

Before I can blink, he closes the distance between us and presses his lips to mine. The kiss starts out soft, hardly the hottest kiss on the planet, but soon it’s like a match has been struck and we become an inferno.

My palms press against his bare chest as I try to get closer—like I wish I could claw my way inside and sink down into him. One of his hands fists in my hair and the other settles on my waist, dangerously close to my butt. I move so I’m straddling him and he sits up, the movement pressing me more firmly against him and he growls lowly. My heart speeds up at the sound. I love that I unravel him in a way I’ve never seen him come undone before. 

His hand on my waist tightens to a bruising pressure, but I don’t mind. My hands move up his chest and wrap around his neck. He nips at my bottom lip and I moan. 

We’re playing with fire, straddling a dangerous line of getting caught before we figure our shit out, but I can’t seem to stop this. I don’t
want
to stop this. I’ve been denying myself what I want for years, trying to save other people’s feelings, but I’m done with that because what
I
want is important too and I want Xander in a way I’ve never wanted another person before. It’s always been him, and while getting married wasn’t in my plans, it might not be the worst thing that’s ever happened—not that I’m going to tell him that.

He moves suddenly so my back is pressed into the bed and he hovers above me. I arch up, missing the feel of his body pressed to mine, and he obliges by lowering so we’re flush. I nearly sigh in relief and wrap my legs around his waist. He groans and his hands slide up my shirt, little by little, until he finds my breasts. I’m not wearing a bra and he makes a sound of approval, deepening the kiss. He cups my breasts, and even though they’re not the largest in the world, he doesn’t seem to mind. 

He breaks the kiss long enough to tear my shirt off and then his lips are back. This kiss is unlike any other I’ve ever had. It’s like we’re dancing to a song that only the two of us know. His thumb rubs against my nipple and my hips buck.

“Xander,” I moan into his mouth, but the word is barely distinguishable as English. “Please,” I beg, but I don’t really know what I’m begging for. 

He kisses down my neck, between my breasts, and over my stomach. 

When he reaches the area above my sleep shorts, he presses one last kiss and then looks at me with heated eyes.

My heart sounds like thunder in my ears, drowning out my thoughts.

I can see Xander warring with himself, with whether or not he should stop, and frankly, I don’t know what I want him to do. The rational part of my brain screams that we shouldn’t do this, but fuck it, I want to.

“Thea,” he whispers and he sounds pained. I think maybe he wants me to stop him, but I can’t. I can’t find the words, because my throat is clogged with everything I want and don’t want to say. 

He moves back up my body and kisses me deeply, branding himself on my soul. My fingers wind into his hair and I tug on the dark strands. 

His hand ghosts over my stomach and slips beneath my shorts. I gasp and then bite his lip as he slips a finger inside me. I clench around him and I’m pretty sure I whimper. 

His touch is heaven and hell all in one. 

His eyes find mine and they’re shimmering with desire. I can’t believe that he’s looking at
me
like that. 

 I grasp his face between my hands and our lips hover near each other, barely touching, sharing breaths. 

His eyes dart down, looking beneath the covers where his hand disappears. I whimper as he applies more pressure and my breath picks up.

Close. So close.

And then I fall off the ledge and he drowns out my cry of pleasure with a kiss. 

He pulls his hand from my shorts and lays down, draping my body across his. I can barely breathe but I start to move, to give him the relief he just gave me, but he shakes his head and tightens his hold on me so I can’t move.

“This was about you, not me.”

I lay my head on his chest. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re too nice?”

He chuckles. “Maybe once or twice.”

“Your blue balls are going to hate you later,” I warn him.

He chuckles and kisses the end of my nose. “Yeah, well, some sacrifices are worth it. Baby steps,” he murmurs and kisses me again, this time on the lips, but it’s simply a peck unlike the passionate one from moments before. Just the same, it leaves me weak in the knees.

It’s in this moment that I realize I’m dangerously close to falling in love with Xander.

When you’ve already loved someone the way I’ve loved him for years, it’s all too easy to fall over the edge into a new kind of love.

A better kind of love.

A forever kind of love.