Torn (25 page)

I pulled on my backpack straps,
the weight of my college books making it hard to keep it up in a comfortable
position. As I turned the corner and looked up at the bus stand, I knew my
temporary reprieve was over. They were there, waiting for me. By all accounts,
Josh hadn’t been himself yesterday and wasn’t happy to be told not to say
anything to Billy. I wasn’t just worried about Billy’s reaction, about the fact
that he seemed to have a quick-to-anger side to him. I was worried that now that
he was faced with reality, Josh might back away from me. No, Nate Hudson wasn’t
the heartbreaker. That title was reserved for one Sky Torres. I braced myself
for the hardest conversation of my life.

“Billy!” I yelled from the back
seat, as he stormed down to the double doors in the center of the bus when it
pulled up at the next stop.

“I’d better follow him,” Josh
said quietly as he rose up from his seat next to me.

“Josh, please,” I pleaded. “Don’t
go. You’ve barely said two words to me this morning.” He just shook his head,
his eyes full of hurt.

“He needs me, you know that.
Where he goes, I go.”

“We need to talk about it. You
told me on Friday that you were ok with this.” I was vaguely aware of people
getting on the bus and knew I didn’t have much time to convince him to stay. I
reached up to grab his hand, and he tensed up immediately.

“What’s there to say, Sky? I
thought I could handle the idea of it, turns out reality’s harder than I
thought, and now Billy’s upset too. I have to go. I just … I need some time to
adjust, ok?”

“
Josh
.” My voice fell on
deaf ears as his fingers pulled away from mine and he rushed down the aisle to
squeeze out of the doors just as they were closing.

I twisted in my seat as the bus
continued rumbling on its way to Henderson, and watched as he caught up to
Billy. I hadn’t expected the news to be taken well by Billy, but he was furious
and had called me some not-very-complimentary names, and Josh hadn’t been
spared from his wrath either. I pulled my feet up onto the seat and huddled in
the corner, hugging my knees. I’d been honest with them from the start that I
didn’t want a relationship. The only one I’d lied to was Nate, by not telling
him outright it was him I wanted. I’d even been clear that I was only doing
that stupid three dates thing so they’d all feel like they’d been given a
chance. Why was I suddenly the bad guy? I buried my head in my knees and prayed
that I hadn’t just screwed up my friendships and risked everything for a guy
who might suddenly get cold feet when people found out he had a girlfriend and
ribbed him for it. All of a sudden I was seeing us as Danny and Sandy from
Grease.
The cool guy with the geeky awkward girl. I just had to reassure myself
that it had all turned out ok in the end. They’d ended up together. If I had
just lost Billy and Josh, I was going to make damn sure it wasn’t for nothing.
Nate and I were going to prove everyone wrong.

How did it go? Did you tell him?
He isn’t answering my calls, neither is Josh.

Nate’s text had dragged my head
out of the textbooks I’d buried myself in at the library, needing something to focus
on other than my worry about my two friends. I’d sent them both texts, but
neither of them had replied.

Not great. Billy was really
angry, and nasty. Josh barely said a word and followed Billy when he stalked
off. They both skipped class and I’m feeling awful!

Moments later, my phone vibrated
with an incoming call from him. I glanced around the library, which was
virtually empty but for me, and risked answering.

“Hey.”

“When do your lectures finish for
the day?” Nate demanded with no pleasantries. His authority and that deep, sexy
tone sent a shiver skittering down my spine.

“I don’t have any more, I was
going to study until you picked me up. Why?” I asked, wishing it was already
eight-thirty so that I could be back in his arms.

“Meet me in the usual pick-up
place in half an hour.”

“You have lectures, Ace,” I
warned, “and practice.”

“I can blow off one lecture. You
need me, so I’m coming to get you and bring you back here, as long as you don’t
mind sitting and waiting while I play?”

“Hmmm, watch my boyfriend in his
tight white baseball pants, flexing his delicious muscles, let me think about
that,” I teased.

“Say that again,” he ordered.

“Delicious muscles?”

“No.”

“Tight white pants?”

“You know the word I want to
hear, baby. Don’t make me punish you when I get there.”

“If you plan on tickling me to
death again, I’d better warn you I’m wearing a complete bodysuit made of state-of-the-art
Kevlar, totally impenetrable. And incredibly
sexy,”
I added, dropping my
voice to an even lower whisper.

“Sky!” he growled, making me
giggle. “I’ve never hit a girl, but right now the thought of hauling you over
my knee and spanking that sexy ass of yours has me considering breaking the
speed of sound to get to you.”

“I did mention I’m a virgin,
right? Who knows, I might quite like a little bit of spanking.”

“SKY,” he barked. “Jesus, do you
have any idea what you’re doing to me?”

“Sorry,
boyfriend
,” I
breathed as sexily as possible. I smiled when he groaned with satisfaction.

“
That’s
the word I wanted
to hear. Say it again.”

“Sorry?” I burst out laughing
when he cussed, and grimaced and mouthed an apology as the librarian snapped
her head up with a loud warning “Sssshhhh.”

“You’re getting a spanking, Sky
Torres. I don’t make promises and back out on them.”

“Bring it on, Ace. I’ve never
backed down from a challenge.”

“They’ll get over it, you know,”
he added randomly. He said it in a way that made me think he was trying to
convince himself more than me.

“I hope so,” I sighed.

“Be ready, half an hour.”

“Ok,” I confirmed, feeling
relieved for the first time since that bus pulled away from two of my best
friends this morning.

“And it doesn’t matter if you
have Kevlar on, baby. Nothing will stop me from touching you whenever I see you.”

“Nothing would stop me from
feeling your touch, Ace. See you in a while.
Boyfriend
.” I smiled as I
hung up on the sound of another groan. Who’d have thought one word could affect
someone like Nate so badly? It just made me all the more confident that I’d made
the right decision. I didn’t care what Pops said, Nate Hudson was the perfect
guy for me. The one worth waiting for.

Nate

“Jesus, Hudson,” Saunders laughed.
“I’ve never seen you in such a hurry to get out onto the field.”

“I’m dedicated, that’s all,” I
shrugged, as I headed to the locker room exit after dressing in record time.

“Yeah, right. Nothing to do with
that sexy little piece of ass that’s sitting out there waiting to see you play.”

“Absolutely nothing at all,” I
grinned, giving him a wink, then screwing up my face as the hollering from the
rest of the guys started.

“You in a hurry cause your balls
need an extra bit of spit and polish, Hudson?” one of them yelled.

“Or he needs his bat polished,” snickered
another. “Mind you, if it’s that babe who’s been coming to watch us lately,
can’t say I blame him. Wouldn’t mind her working on my wood, reckon she’d help
me hit a home run first time out.”

A wave of laughter went around
the room as I stood grasping the door handle, my knuckles turning white as I held
it in a death grip. Whoever had just yelled that was damn lucky the lockers
were separating us or I’d have thrown a punch, or twenty, for being so fucking
disrespectful of her. I shut them out and jogged up the tunnel and out onto the
floodlit field, more desperate to steal another few minutes with her than to
deal with those fuckers. There was only Saunders, Ryder, and Griffin that I had
any time for on the team. And Coach, he was a good guy, when he wasn’t riding
my ass about my speed and strike statistics.

I searched for her, finding her
sitting up above the dugouts, and her smile when she saw me was brighter than
all of the damn spotlights put together. I’d give anything to see that smile
more often. I flicked my head to the seats in the stands level with the field,
and she headed down as I walked to the railings. I prepared as I waited,
twisting my baseball cap around so that the brim was at the back, wanting
nothing to get in the way. As soon as she made it down, my gloved hand was
cradling the back of her head and my tongue was in her mouth. Fuck. Those moans
she made when I kissed her were intoxicating. Like seeing her in a pair of
tight jeans wasn’t enough to send all of the blood rushing to my cock, those noises
were nearly enough to make me detonate. I felt her hands slide to the back of
my neck as I virtually hauled her over the metal rails, my fingers buried deep
in the flesh of her ass. Jesus, she was going to be so fucking disappointed
with me when we first had sex. I was gonna come the second she touched me.

“Hudson!” roared Coach. “Are we
here to play or make out?”

“Fuck,” I muttered, pulling my
lips away from hers, but smiling to see the dazed look on her face. A look I’d
put there. A look no one else ever had, and never fucking would if I had
anything to do with it. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be, you’ll kiss me into a
coma. Go, show me what you can do, Ace.”

“Don’t be watching my ass too
hard,” I grinned as I swiveled my cap back around.

“Please, I’ll be too busy
checking out all the others.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. She
was only teasing, but
damn
if I didn’t feel all kinds of jealous over
it.

“HUDSON!”

“Go,” she repeated. I pecked her
lips again and spun around to jog over to the pitcher’s mound. At least she was
smiling again. The depressed look on her face when I’d pulled up at NSC had
nearly killed me. I flicked a glance over my shoulder to see she’d gone back up
to her favorite seat above the dugout, and groaned and rolled my eyes to see some
of the guys in there mimicking pelvic thrusts, grinding, and some with their
backs to me, running their hands up and down their shoulders as they pretended
to kiss.
Fuckers!
I flipped them the bird, then winked up at Sky. Not
one of them would do anything different in my shoes. They just hadn’t met the
one girl to make them give up on all the others. I had, and I didn’t care what
they thought. I soon wiped the smug Hudson’s-pussy-whipped smirks off their
faces when I beat my personal best with a 104 miles per hour fastball, which
had Coach, and Sky, jumping up and down for joy. Much as I wanted to rejoice in
the moment, in how her being around just made me want to do better, all I could
focus on was how delicious her tits looked bouncing in that pink sweater she
was wearing.

“Feeling better?” I asked as I
ran my fingers through her hair, when we finally stopped kissing after I was
getting too hot and heavy. Being with a virgin, and having to show some
restraint, was something I was going to have to adjust to.

“Much. It’s like when I see you,
I know I made the right choice, the only choice, regardless of what it might
cost us. When you’re out of sight, I worry about how much we’ve hurt them.”

“They’re old enough to
understand, baby. Trust me, if you’d picked one of them instead, they’d have
been sitting here with you right now, maybe feeling guilty too, but not letting
it stop them.”

“You’re right,” she agreed with a
sigh as she snuggled against me, her face in the crook of my neck. Jesus, even
just her breathing on my skin made my cock throb, not to mention the fact we’d
steamed up the windows of the Impala again. I was not making the mistake of
waiting to deal with this erection until I got home again, like I had on
Saturday night, or I’d get sucked into more family drama the minute I walked
in. But neither was I about to be arrested looking like some kind of sad
pervert who sat jerking off in his car.