Giving In (The Sandy Cove Series Book 1) (22 page)

I really don’t want to have to explain to him
why I lie. It should be clear as day from the scene that just took
place in that waiting room. Why would I tell a girl who was raised
by two loving parents, in a big house, with a top notch education
and a big bank account that my mother is a crack-head? She whored
her body out for drugs and my brother and I had to fend for
ourselves for most of our lives. She’d probably turn and run and
never speak to me again.

And that would kill me.

“You know what, you two, I’m going to the
cafeteria and this conversation is over. Harlow is a friend. I
don’t do the girlfriend thing.” I motion to them both. “And I
certainly don’t do what you two are doing. I don’t want it.”

With that I walk out of the room.

I went into the Marines to escape the life I
had, which wasn’t one. I know what it’s like to starve, to be cold,
to not have running water ‘cause my mother didn’t pay the bills. I
know what it’s like to wear shoes two sizes too small because
there’s no money to buy new ones and socks that were somehow chewed
up by mice in the middle of the night. I know what it’s like to be
alone.

And I’ve learned to live with it. Harlow never
had to deal with any of that. Just because her parents made her get
a job and pay for some things on her own, doesn’t mean she would
have any clue as to what my life was like. She’s so out of my
league. It’s almost comical. She’s a pain in my ass with her big
brain and her over-judging everything I do or say, down to the
girls I bring home and fuck. Yes, I kissed her, which is still
plaguing my mind as to why. Maybe it was because it was all those
emotions that were built up over the day. I haven’t slept. We came
right here from my twelve hour shift because I was worried about
Bella. Holding my nephew in my arms… And then Rae showing up was
the cherry on top of the mother fucking sundae.

I’m so tired.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and startles me
awake. I must have dozed off in Bella’s room after I came back with
my coffee. I look at my phone and it’s a text from Harlow. The
roller coaster in my belly suddenly rears its ugly head, and here I
am fumbling to press the message button as quickly as these large
fingers of mine can.

hey dickcop, lol, home safe. hows the little
man?

if you are referring to my penis, I think
you have the wrong man

Haha. very funny. how is everyone?

fine. you ready for tomorrow?

as ready as ill ever be

good. my bus is @ 8 so i’ll be home in the
early afternoon

ok. be safe.

good luck tomorrow. i know they are going to
love you

lets hope. xx

“See what I mean Tony, look at his face. Since
when does he get a look on his face like that from a text. It was
her wasn’t it?”

Oh, my God! Damn, this woman can see through me
like a pair of titties on a wet t-shirt.

“Bella, what do you want me to tell you?”

“I want you to admit that you feel more than
friendship for her.”

Tucking my phone back into my shorts, I cross my
arms in front of me. “You want me to admit that I’m feeling
something other than friendship for her?”

She nods and I really struggle with what I feel.
I struggle with what happened between us outside the hospital and
about the feeling it left me with. This can’t be happening to me.
It can’t be real. What I think I feel can’t be. I don’t feel this
shit.

“Fine, Bella. Maybe I do, but I’m confused and
I’m trying to figure it out. All I know is I feel different when
she’s here, and I’m feeling different when she’s not here. I can’t
explain it, but I don’t know how to remedy it either.”

There. I was honest. I’m confused as to the way
I feel. I know when I’m with her I feel something that I can’t
recognize, and I know when she’s not with me… I want her to be.

“Don’t even dare say I told you so. It’s not a
big deal. Nothing’s going to happen anyway. She’s way out of my
league. She’s not even on the same farm team as me.”

I’m fucking McDonald’s and she’s Beef
Wellington. Yea, I felt something when I kissed her. I didn’t know
what I felt before I did that, but now I do. With my head running
in a hundred different directions, is it that I just can’t see what
is in front of me. Eight and a half weeks’ worth of getting to know
her. Realizing she’s not the stuck up bitch I thought her to be.
The spoiled, little, rich girl with the silver spoon in her mouth.
The girl who always has the answers. But the truth is, most of the
time she does.

She’s my therapy.

I’m pacing around this room, pulling at my hair,
my hands shaking from nerves and Bella and Tony must think I’m
having some kind of post-traumatic episode or something. I think
Bella knows better. I see the way they look at each other as I
wander around, not being able to sit still. I look at Bella, who
knows me all too well. I’m like a piece of glass she can look
through. A kaleidoscope of emotions, and she sees every one of
them, like Harlow does.

“Raph, sometimes what’s right in front of us
isn’t as clear as we hope it could be. Our minds are asleep, and
then we wake up, and the possibility of what the reality is, stares
us in the face. It’s scary, but the truth is, once it hits, we have
to confront it head on and accept the reality.”

Her words knock me down like a tornado, and I’m
pretty sure that kiss hit me to realize what this really is.

Harlow is my reality.

Damn it! Why is it that I was so blind not to
see it before. Too close-minded, too quick to shut it all down.

Harlow, Harlow… Harlow.

Harlow is my warmth from the cold, and the food
when I’m hungry. She is the light in my dark, the patch to the hole
that’s inside my heart. In this crazy life I live, how can one
person make me feel all the things I do? Before I met Harlow, I was
a shell. I was just going through the motions for pleasure, not
really feeling, just existing. Running through my life, or running
from it, but when I see her on those mornings, by the dock so
sweetly sitting there, waiting for me, her vulnerability slipping
away day by day, I know that it’s where I belong. In her presence.
Anticipating the time when I can be near her, close to her,
breathing in her smell, her touch mere inches from me, every
morning, every day, working its way into my soul. A soul that
really didn’t work. A man on the outside. Inked flesh, wounded by
so much, but she heals that. She believes in me, she believes I
have a soul, she believes I’m worth something. To me, that’s more
pleasure than I could never get from some random fuck I bring home
from a bar. A year ago, she showed me pleasure, made me come so
hard and fast, wanting that again in my mind a thousand times over
after that night, but not realizing that the feeling she gave me
was what I wanted again from her and more.

Was I trying my damnedest to fill that void over
the course of the past year with other women because what I felt
for her that night in that bathroom bar was something more that
sex? Was there something deeper in those eyes when I looked into
them? I played that night over and over again in my head, just
thinking I’m a young guy who scored one night, experimenting with
some uninhibited nature.

No, God damn it. That’s not it. It’s not that.
If it was, I would have just forgotten all the details that made it
real. I remember her soft skin, the way her thighs felt against my
hand, the silkiness of her hair. She smelled like sugar, all sweet
and tasted like it just as much. The way her lips felt on mine, not
caring who was beyond that door. How her body reacted as I made her
come, the pulsating way she trembled, the warmth that I felt all
over my body when she did. I didn’t fucking forget it like I did
with who knows how many others I’ve had between that night and
now.

And I know that there’s something real I’m
feeling. I knew it when I kissed her today. That feeling returned.
I was just too caught up in the whole excitement of it all last
year to truly know, to truly figure out that she’s what I want,
what I need. I lied to Bella and Tony back in that room when I said
I didn’t want what they have, ‘cause guess what, I do. I want
Harlow. I want her like I want my next breath.

How the fuck did I come to this conclusion?

But how do I convince her that that night was
more than sex, more than just some hookup. How do I convince her to
give in to it? Give into the feelings, ‘cause God knows she’s the
one who has made me give in. Harlow. She cracked this shell that’s
been around me for so long. I’ve fought in wars, faced death, seen
death, built up a wall of hardness around myself, and she broke it.
Crushed it to the ground. I’m not the man I was, and she’s the
reason. I feel safe and secure around her. Two things I’ve never
had in my life. I’ve never given in to the whole soulmate thing. To
me, it was nonexistent. A fable, something made up in a fairytale.
I’m still not one hundred percent convinced of it, but I don’t
think I can go on another second without finding out the truth
behind it. I wonder if she felt something when we kissed. Did she
feel that electric spark, the current running through us? How her
body molded into mine. She couldn’t deny that… Right?

I’ve never done this before. Try and figure out
if someone feels the way I do. Girls fall in love with me all the
time.

See, that’s a lie. They fall in love with my
body, my face, the way I make them feel. I’m a puppet on a string,
dancing around for their entertainment, fulfilling their pleasure,
while I mask mine with some fucked up fantasy of the way things
should be when you’re with someone.

I have to tell her. I have to convince her that
it’s more than friendship, more than just sitting on a dock telling
each other about our life’s worries and war stories. It’s more than
sexual innuendoes and drinking games. There’s some other kind of
deeper meaning behind all of it and for the first time in my life,
I’m going to find out what everyone else in my life is talking
about.

My heart is not the cold sheet of ice I thought
it was because Harlow Hannum melted that away. I’m not letting
another moment go by without telling her, without trying to
convince her to give in… To me… To us.

***

I can still feel his lips on mine, even after
being home, showered, dressed and asked a million and one questions
by Willow, I can still feel them. As I laid in bed last night,
constantly tossing and turning and unable to sleep due to the
memory of Cruz kissing me, I have forced myself to believe that
kiss must have been from pure adrenaline on his part. Lack of
sleep, the rush of excitement, the new life he held in his hands,
yep, that’s what I chalked it up to, pure adrenaline. That kiss was
nothing more than a thank you for being there for him, he even said
so himself. I know he asked me afterwards what I thought of it, why
he had done so, but I was so taken aback, even I didn’t have an
answer for once, so I used my interview as a distraction.

The interview.

My future rests in the hands of three men and
two women. Throughout my interview, his lips had the advantage over
my concentration. When the panel of principals and the head of the
school’s administration looked over my credentials, my letters of
recommendation, a mock up lesson plan I had to come up with in
well… Less than a day’s notice, the feeling of his lips on mine
still lingered. The whole drive home was difficult in weighing out
the reasons why I felt some kind of unnatural reaction to it. Or
was it natural and I was so caught up in the moment to even know
the difference. Still the fact remains, and the one I lost sleep
over is his happiness, his passion, the excitement made him do what
he did. He’s Cruz for God’s sake. Someone who I’ve come to admire.
We have bonded over this summer. We tell each other almost
everything, except I don’t care to know who his flavor of the
evening is. We kid. We joke. It’s almost like hanging with Craw…
Almost. He’s a force to be reckoned with when it comes to women.
We’ve had lengthy conversations regarding his take on relationships
and sex. Numerous times. His comfortable way of talking to me about
those things is a red flag in my brain right now.

It was just a kiss between friends. He fucks
them and leaves them. Famous last words by him: ‘Get in and get
out’.

But why for the love of God does this plague my
mind? Why is it taking up every corner of my thoughts and yielding
them into some kind of twisted thought process? We need to talk
when he gets back. I need to answer his question from before, at
the hospital. What did I think about what happened between us? What
did I think about the kiss, and I’m fully prepared to tell him
exactly what I think? Or at least what I talked myself into
thinking.