“So now I’m Tana again?”
I approached her from behind. “I don’t want to fight with you.” I hated it when we were at odds. She’d become my oasis when the demons of my past were too much to bear. Funny, sweet and gentle, she had a way of calming the hell that chased me and drove me to do the things I did.
She stopped raking out the scraps of pizza crust Mark would never eat and turned to face me, her expression a mixture of anger and hurt. “There’s no fight. You’ll have sex with a skank and a random skank at that, but not me.”
“Shit. Here we go again.” She had no idea what was at stake. Sex with someone you cared about always changed everything. When she picked up a cloth to wipe off the table, I grabbed her arm and stopped her. “I only fuck girls I don’t care about. They know the score and they’re only looking for a good time. They don’t expect anything after sex and I sure as hell don’t give them anything. There are less complications that way.”
“You know that makes you sound like an asshole.”
“I meant it to. I don’t care about those girls but you and I are friends.” I ran my hand from her arm up to her shoulder and gazed into her eyes, hoping she understood what I couldn’t even explain to myself.
She shook her head and tucked one side of her hair behind her ear. “That you and I are friends was my whole point. I figured if it was with someone I care about, you know...it’d be better. I don’t want my first time to be with someone who treats girls the way you treat your...uncomplicated ones. I don’t want to go to college a virgin.” She let out a long sigh when I didn’t answer, then bit her lip. “I guess I can try Brett.”
“Brett?” The mention of him made my temper flare. Hidden behind the smooth face, flashy car, and grin, was a guy who had a habit of not taking no for an answer. “You talk about assholes. That guy is a major one.”
She shrugged. “He seems nice and he has asked me out.”
“He’s not, and when did he ask you out?”
“Couple of weeks ago right after graduation.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Now that I knew, I’d spell it out to Brett in blood and broken bones that Tana was off limits.
“Yeah, Ryan, I didn’t. It’s not like you’re my diary or anything.” She crossed her arms against her chest and leaned her back against the sink, putting some space between us. “Just go play a game with Mark and leave me alone.”
What the fuck had just happened? I was trying to protect her and now I was the bad guy? “Tana—”
“Go!”
I hated when she acted like that. Girl drama drove me bat shit crazy. Shrugging, I turned around and left the kitchen to go into Mark’s room. He looked up at me when I entered.
His eyes were wide and sad in his small face. “Are you and Tana fighting?”
“We’re disagreeing.” I shoved aside a pile of toys and took a seat beside him on the floor at the foot of his bed. I leaned my back against the blankets and picked up a remote.
“Dad and Mom fought, then he left.” Mark maneuvered his player through a jungle and sent me a side-eye glance.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“You know it, buddy.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
Mark looked relieved, then said, “I don’t like Brett.”
I paused to look over at him. “What?”
“He came over when Mom wasn’t here and talked to Tana. He gives me a mean look when he sees me and he scares me.”
I was gonna beat Brett’s ass twice as hard. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t come back.”
“Cool.” Mark stuck his tongue out of his mouth and bit down as he concentrated on the game.
Keys jangled and the front door opened.
“Uh oh.” Mark threw the controller aside and jumped up. “I’m grounded. I’m not supposed to be playing.”
We exited the room and Mrs. Shaw smiled when she saw me in the narrow hallway. She was a shorter, slightly heavier version of Tana with eyes that crinkled in the corners whenever she smiled. “Ryan. I didn’t know you were stopping by.” She liked me okay, but that was because she didn’t know about my past. If she did, I doubted she would want me around either of her kids. Turning her head, she saw the pizza box on the kitchen counter and frowned.
“I bought a pizza. Hope that’s okay,” I said, flashing her a wide smile.
“Yes, of course.”
Tana joined us and her mom said, “I’m going to take a shower. Mark, did you already shower?”
He rolled his eyes but didn’t let her see him. “Yep.”
“Then you need to brush your teeth and get in the bed.”
“It’s Friday,” he whined.
“Now, Mark.” She said in a weary tone as she walked past me into her bedroom.
Mark stomped into his room. “When I’m an adult, I’ll do what I damn well please.”
“If Mom hears you talking like that, you won’t live to be an adult,” Tana said.
Mark slammed his bedroom door and a photograph of the three of them hanging on the hallway wall fell onto the floor. Tana picked it up and sighed as she brushed it off and put it back.
“Has your dad been around this week?”
“No. He was supposed to take Mark to an amusement park but he didn’t show. Mark waited on the front porch for hours. This is the fourth time in a row he’s blown him off. I hate that Mark is hurt, but I’m not sorry my father isn’t around much.”
From what I’d gleaned about her father, he was pretty much a selfish asshole. I hated the sadness in her eyes and wanted desperately to fix it. “I have to work at the garage a half day tomorrow but you wanna do something after that? We could hit the party at Kurt’s house. I’ll be the key man so you can have a good time and I’ll get you home safely.”
“No, I don’t want to go to the party. I decided that I’m going on a date.”
“With who?”
“None of your business.” She walked across the living room and pointedly opened the door. “So, thanks for paying for the pizza. I’ll see you around.”
When I made it out to the porch, I turned to say something else to her, but she’d already closed the door. I shook my head and walked down the steps and over to the 1968 Dodge Charger I’d rescued from the junkyard six months ago. The car was primer gray, with several beat up places on the body and it looked like hell. But what mattered to me was the 426 HEMI engine hulking under the hood. Bigger valves meant better airflow which meant it owned the road.
The old guy planning to restore it had died and his crackhead granddaughter junked the car for a few hundred bucks minutes before I saw it. My lucky damn day. I sat in the car and ran my hand along the steering wheel but I couldn’t keep my mind from thinking about Tana.
If not Brett, which I’d make sure of, she’d still probably go out with an asshole who wouldn’t look out for her. Some guy who’d use her, wouldn’t even make sure he protected her. I knew a few of the guys sniffing around and they were more fucked up than I was. She didn’t know that some of them liked to smack the hell out of girls. I don’t know how I’d live with myself if she got hurt. Or how I’d keep from putting the guy who hurt her in the hospital. Slamming my fist against my thigh, I jogged back up onto the steps to knock on the door.
Tana jerked it open, her beautiful eyes startled when she saw me. “Ryan. Did you forget something?”
“Three rules.” I ground out, trying to keep from hating myself for not being able to stick to saying no when it came to her.
She frowned, perplexed. “What?”
“First, you get on the pill if you’re not already. Second, we don’t ever talk about it afterward because we’re not a couple and we’ll never be together like that. Third, you don’t fall in love with me.”
She looked at me without speaking, her chest rising and falling in the skimpy T-shirt that showed off her slender figure. I could see the outline of her breasts and the nipples pebbling through the material. Defining moments of our friendship ran through my mind in the eternity her eyes locked with mine. I knew without a doubt that this was going to define it in ways that might scar her heart the way my body had been scarred by foster dad #2. Deep. Ugly. Everlasting. “Well?” I asked when she didn’t say anything and I felt like an idiot.
“Agreed,” she said softly, her face flushing, and then I could breathe again. She bit her lip. “Will you kiss me? I wanna see if it would be too weird. Because if it is, we’ll forget it.”
Kiss Tana
. My head spun at the thought. “Okay. Yeah.”
She stepped out onto the porch beside me, pulling the door shut behind her. “Umm...” She raised her arms and then lowered them, giving a nervous laugh. “I’m not sure what to do...I mean...I’ve kissed guys before...but this is you...and...”
“Shh...” I put my hands on her hips and guided her closer until her body was flush with mine. The effect when we connected was an adrenaline high. The cold bastard in my soul drank in the innocent sweetness of hers. I clenched my jaw, fighting myself. If I could, I’d kick my own ass. Every fiber of control in me was screaming at me to let go, to walk away, to never look back. Then she pressed into me and that wasn’t an option I had any more.
She had great curves, ones that lured me closer to the edge. Her perfume surrounded me and the sweetness of her breath blew across my face when she exhaled. I deliberately dropped my hand to her sweetly curved ass and pressed her body against me, letting her feel how she affected me. Where she was soft and giving, I was hard and unyielding. Her eyes widened and she trembled.
Part of me wanted her to push me away and say she’d changed her mind. The other part of me, the part the system taught to look out for number one, wanted her against me for the thrill it gave my body.
She breathed out faster, her breath coming in small hitches. I lowered my head slowly, searching her beautiful face, giving her time to change her mind, hoping she would because the road we were on was slippery, coated with the ice of future regret. But she didn’t move and then it was too late because I was going to take what she was offering. I was a man who’d fallen off the cliff. My lips touched hers for the first time and it tilted my world upside down. Her lips were soft and eager, her hands wandering across my back, her breasts pushed hard into me. The taste of her was like sunshine and summer and I couldn’t get enough. My body heated up like a wildfire had me in its grip. I dove deeper into the kiss, pulling at her lower lip gently with my teeth. I wanted to pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist and dive into her.
When she whimpered and moaned my name, I knew I was thinking with my dick and was only minutes from taking her right here on the damn porch. No girl had ever made me feel so out of control. Forcing myself to stop, I put my hands on either side of her face. “Slow down,” I whispered against her lips, shocked at how right kissing her was, at how badly I wanted to bury myself in her and not stop until neither of us could walk. The kiss drove home what a friendship- wrecking idea us together was and nagged at me to tell her I’d changed my mind. But I couldn’t form the words that would push her away. This girl owned pieces of me that no one else ever had. Pieces I didn’t want to examine too closely and that was dangerous for both of us. I couldn’t let her fall for me. The people in my life always ended up damaged because of me and I’d rather break into a thousand pieces than to break her.
My body screamed at me, calling me an idiot for not taking the next step, but I ignored it and dragged my mouth away from hers.
“Wow,” she whispered with a glow in her eyes.
Her expression was full of shooting stars and what-if fantasies. I had to crush the fairy tale, make her see that reality with me was cut and dried. Sex and nothing else. I injected as much arrogance in my voice as I could muster. “After you get on the pill, show me the proof.”
She yanked her head back like I’d slapped her. A disgusted expression flashed across her face and she shoved against my chest. “You think I’m looking to get pregnant?”
“No, I don’t think that.” I glanced away from the accusation in her eyes. I’d meant to create distance to clear my own head and make sure she didn’t think I could give her more, but I hadn’t meant to insult her. Tana didn’t know the drama that went on with some of my friends and I’d be damned if I was ever going to let myself end up as a father. With my fucked up history, I didn’t have anything to offer a kid. There was no way I wanted to pass that legacy on.
“Fine.” Her eyes flashed her anger. “I’ll show you the proof. Anything else?”
A heavy awkwardness settled between us, coolness where there had been heat. I wanted to reach for her, but it was better that I didn’t. “I’ll let you know when I set up a place we can go.”
Nudging a piece of cracked wood on the porch with the tip of a pink painted toenail, she sighed, the anger draining from her. She looked more unsure of herself than I’d ever seen her when she turned her beautiful eyes back up at me. “I know it’s only sex and you said that we won’t talk about it afterward but...could you like...not make me feel bad about it later?”
That stung. I wasn’t anything like her damn father. He’d done some emotional damage to Tana as well as her mom and brother but I didn’t play mind games and I didn’t hurt women. I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. It had always been easy to talk to Tana before sex became the topic. “You really think I’d do that?”
“No.” She gave me a smile. “I’m just nervous, I guess. I shouldn’t be.” She rubbed her hand across the tattoos covering my left arm. “Despite your fierce appearance, you’ve always been so gentle around me. Tough on the outside, sweet on the inside. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.”
Her words sucker punched me in the heart and the blood drained from my face.
Laughing, she patted my chest, her hand lingering for a sweet torture of a second. “Easy. You can breathe, Ryan. I would have been so crazy without you when we first moved here. You were my anchor. I didn’t mean that I’m in love with you. I meant I love you as in you’re my best friend.”
“Oh.” I took a deep breath and let it out as everything righted itself again. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll call you later.” I walked to my car, waiting until she was safe inside the house before I backed from the driveway. I didn’t like the funny sensation coursing through my body. Like I was in a race car doing two hundred miles an hour headed straight for a wall and even knowing a crash was inevitable, I kept my foot on the gas pedal.