Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance (10 page)

"Is this a game?" I said, crossing my arms beneath my chest, "Because if it is, it isn't funny and I don't want to play anymore."

"Then admit it. Say the words if you can." He mirrored me, crossing his arms as well.

The stream babbled on beside us, oblivious to the confrontation.

I tried to say the words, tried to tell him that yes, I did want him to kiss me. Yes, I think I even wanted more than kissing. The words wouldn't come out past that plug in my throat. The one that consisted of my school aspirations. "This is ridiculous!" I said.

"Maybe, but I'm not doing anything with you except driving you back to campus until you tell me that you want me as much as I want you."

"I'm not taking any ride from you. Just get me back to the gate and I'll find my own way home."

My voice had all the more venom in it because I did want him to kiss me again. Kiss me and not stop kissing me until we laid down on the soft grass beneath the weeping willow. However, some lingering sense of pride kept me from speaking the words he wanted to hear. I couldn't get them out.

His eyes on me didn't help. Watching, weighing, considering. I knew he saw right through me, saw the way I struggled. He knew he was right. I knew he was right. And that made me angry.

"No?" he said, after giving me 30 seconds to try and do as he asked, "That's okay. I know that you'll come around."

One of the boughs from the weeping willow drooped quite close to him. He reached out and ran his fingers down the branch, the blossoms separating and drifting away. Some of them landed in the stream and floated with the current.

He also looked at his watch. "If you want to get back in time, we should head out now. Unless you have something you want to say to me?"

Beneath my crossed arms, I grabbed handfuls of my shirt and squeezed. A mixture of frustration, anger, and desire swirled around inside of me, leaving me hot and shaking.

No one has ever talked to me like this. No one. Ever.

"I don't have anything to say to you. I'm not ever going to have anything to say to you, don't you get it?" I said, those feelings seething beneath the surface, looking for some way out.

Just tell him
, part of me urged.

No, never
, I thought back. I didn't want to ever give him that satisfaction. Even if it meant losing out on something I wanted, too. It meant that much.

As though aware of the little struggle in my head, Owen nodded. He brushed a few stray petals from his sleeves and started away from the stream. "It's easy to get lost in here, so try not to fall too far behind."

"I've never fallen behind in anything in my whole life," I said.

Well, there had been those gym classes back in high school. Like I said, I wasn't a team sports sort of girl. He didn't need to know that, though. However, I also didn't want to get lost in the woods so I followed him back out.

T
he hike back lasted longer than the one in, and when we broke through the tree line into that field of saplings I sighed with relief.

Then I went straight to the Jeep and sat in the passenger seat, looking forward and nowhere else.

I expected him to try and make conversation, but he didn't. And that irritated me more. I couldn't predict this guy, and that drove me wild.

Though maybe he was frustrated. We nearly lost the Jeep taking that one mean curve, Owen downshifting and slamming the accelerator so that the rear of the vehicle fishtailed for a few heart sinking moments.

He dropped me off at the gate and then took off down the road.

My stomach fell through my feet when for one second I wondered if there was cell service out here. I fumbled my phone out and thumbed it on, sweat breaking out on my upper lip.

There were two bars out of five. Enough to get in touch with the shuttle service.

***

T
here was heat. So much heat. And it came from him, so much that it burned. But I liked the burn. I wanted the burn, maybe even needed it.

My world shrank to the size of two bodies intertwined, the sheets a tangled mass at our feet while we rolled around, taking what we needed from each other.

Then something buzzed. I tried to ignore it, but it didn't stop. I woke up, then. A jag of light sliced in through the narrow gap in my drapes, leaving its mark on the opposite wall. I sat up in bed, then lurched over so that I could grab my phone and kill that stupid, buzzing alarm.

The clock read my normal wake up time, 7:30 AM. It felt like three hours too early to me. Unusual, since I tended to wake up a few minutes before it went off.

Something was different.

Then I tossed it back onto the nightstand and fell back against my pillows. My hair, all tangled from my nocturnal thrashing, stuck to my cheeks, to my forehead. I was sweaty all over.

Like I'd been stuck in a nightmare all night long. Except it wasn't a nightmare. I remembered it all, my hot body managing another warm flush that left my heart fluttering and my lungs struggling to get enough air.

It wasn't fair that one person could have such an effect on me. That he could do this to me.

But that kiss
, my still groggy mind said. If I was warm now from a dream, it still didn't compare to the heat of his mouth against mine.

"This is ridiculous," I said, "This shouldn't be happening. There's no reason for it." I didn't like talking to myself, never have. That was what your internal monologue was for. I forgave myself this time, figuring that I needed to hear it said rather than thought.

And it did help, a little. I agreed with my assessment. It was ridiculous. Some niggling part of me piped up and told me that something can be ridiculous but still real, still true.

I banished that thought by kicking my sheets to the floor and getting out of bed.

Then I saw my notes scattered on my desk, my cramped if neat handwriting all over them. I went over and leafed through them, trying to re-absorb all the little facts and figures for my essay.

For a refreshing moment, my mind focused on school and nothing else. It was a welcome return to form.

Then it caught my eye. The Utopia, Inc logo doodled idly in a margin on a page with facts and figures regarding US GDP for the last 40 years. I couldn’t stop looking at that little sideways 8 and the capital U over it. My jaw worked, my eyes widened.

Just say the words. Admit it.
Owen's voice in my head. Yesterday's excursion brute-forced its way from the banks of my memory into my mind's eye.

I shivered, my throat going dry at the same time. I remembered the way his body felt pressed to mine. Solid, firm. I remembered that hint-of-coconut aftershave of his and how intoxicating I found it. Then his lips on mine and the way his kiss melted me.

"No!" I said, grabbing up the sheet of paper. I balled it up and threw it into the corner, missing the waste basket by a good four feet so that it bounced off the wall and came to rest in the middle of the floor.

Why had I drawn that?
I wondered. It didn't matter, I decided. Just an idle doodle. Besides, I needed those numbers and I didn't want to go find them all again.

So I retrieved the paper, plucking it by one upturned corner like I might a used Kleenex.

Then I went and deleted his message from my phone. If I could, I would have burned his number from my mind. I couldn't though, so I settled for shredding the note I wrote it on into little pieces and letting them all flutter from my palm into the garbage.

Then I got ready for the day, washing all the night's sweat off and pulling on my trusty worn jeans and t-shirt. I threw my sturdy boots in the back of the closet where I couldn't see them and pulled on my runners.

I decided I would get the entire essay written that day. Concentrating like that always helped me clear my mind.

Except it didn't. Not this time.

"S
omething up? I don't think I've ever seen you stare into space like that," Jennifer said, "Also, I think that pen's been just about chewed to its limit."

"Hmm?" I said. I pulled the back of the pen from my mouth, discovering how mangled it was. I couldn't even read the BIC trademark on the side. "Oh."

"Must be quite the fascinating patch of wall. I personally prefer more of a pearly white to this greyish one," Jennifer continued.

I looked from her to the section of library wall that I recalled catching my attention some time ago. I scrutinized it, wondering what I found so fascinating. It tugged at my memory, that color. That sort of browny-grey.

"You've been really different this past week or so. Are you sure everything is fine?" Jennifer said, her light teasing turning to concern.

"Yeah I'm fine. Just distracted by this paper I think. It's harder than I thought it would be."

We sat in one of the small study rooms in the library. You could reserve them in two-hour chunks, and I always liked to use them to write papers or study.

However, you couldn't have one of these rooms all to your lonesome.
Minimum two students
the placard on the wall beside the clock read. And they were serious about it, too. Roving librarians would perform spot-checks, peering in through the large window that currently showed me nothing but the stacks on the other side. If you were by yourself, you got the boot. Ask me how I knew.

So I liked to invite Jennifer. She was a good study buddy. Quiet and hardworking, yet willing to let me bounce ideas and thoughts off her. A service which I reciprocated.

I found that it helped you focus if you used certain spaces for specific purposes. Study rooms for studying, bedrooms for sleeping, that sort of thing, and nothing else, it helped me get into the right mindset faster.

Except this time, it seemed.

Not wanting to sabotage our friendship, I invited her out today hoping to both catch up with her and get some serious work done.

"If you want to talk about it, you know I'm here," Jennifer said.

"I know, thanks. I'm all right, really. I didn't sleep so well last night, too. Must be stress from the term catching up with me finally." The words sounded hollow to me.

More, an indistinct, swirling worry took up residence in the pit of my stomach. I looked at my laptop screen. It displayed my partial essay. It had a topic sentence for my first body paragraph and nothing else.

A book lay open beside the laptop on the table that occupied the middle of the room. I couldn't remember flipping through it, or even opening it for that matter.

Instead, all my mental energy focused on that wall. The color tickled at my memory with thin tendrils that slipped from my grasp.

"I get that, too," Jennifer said, "I got the clinic to prescribe me something. I can't remember the name off the top of my head. But they work great! I can text you the name of the stuff later if you want."

"Sure," I said, my mind already drifting.

Then I remembered. The color of Owen's office had been a sort of beige color. Except the library wall wasn't even close.

Yet it still reminded me. It still pulled me out of my attempt at writing.
It's not even the same shade.

Owen's office. The elevator. That tension building in the elevator. Then that kiss by the stream.

All roads led to Owen, I guess.

"It's not good," I said. With disgust, I tossed the chewed pen back into my messenger bag and began looking through the bag for another, less spit-covered one.

"The pen? Yeah, no argument from me," Jennifer said.

I paused, trying to think if I said anything else out loud. When I said that, I didn't mean the pen. I meant all this stuff with Owen. My effort to get back into the mindset for school, for pushing through no matter what it cost. "Yeah, the pen."

I found another pen. A blue ink one instead of a black one. I preferred the black ink, but I made do.

I put pen to paper, read the opened pages of the book in front of me, and forced out a few words.

There, see? You can still do it.
It didn't help much, but I took it.

"How's your paper coming, then?" I asked, thinking talking about school might get me thinking about school, too.

"Pretty good. I'm no Allison Chambers," Jennifer said, "But I think I'll actually have this one ready to go a couple days early. Enough for a good edit, maybe."

"Glad I'm rubbing off on you."
Now would you mind giving it back? I could use some more of the old me right now.

That struck me as ridiculous.
The old me? As in the me from, say, two weeks ago? That was the "old" me?

But if that was the case, who was the new me? Someone I didn't want to be, in any case. I watched with more than a little jealousy while Jennifer started tapping at her slim Apple's keyboard.

I started typing on my laptop, if only to keep her from looking at me and asking what the matter was again. Because if she did, I might tell her the truth. I might let all my guts spill out and damn the mess it caused.

Because what did I owe Owen? If I wanted nothing else to do with him, then what would it matter if I told Jennifer? If I asked her not to tell anyone else what I told her, she wouldn't. I could count on that.

It still seemed wrong to do, though. I couldn't shake that. And if I still thought and felt that way, did it mean that I
did
want something to do with him?

I sneered at my laptop. My still-derailing train of thought turned my words into gibberish.

I should leave
, I thought. Except we had only been in the study room for 45 minutes according to the clock. More than an hour left to my reservation. I never left early. Never. Sometimes I even went down to book the room again if I could.

Jennifer would know something still bugged me if I got up and left now.

"Hey," I said, "I forgot breakfast this morning. Are you hungry? I think maybe I could go for a bite."

"Hmm?" Jennifer said, her fingers pattering away for a few moments more as they struggled to keep up with her thoughts.

That jealousy flared again.
She's in the zone. Why can't I be in the zone?
I also grew annoyed at myself for bothering her while she was busy.