When in Paris... (Language of Love) (9 page)

“No, you’re wrong. I-I-I—” The moment I begin to sputter, my denials are rendered ineffectual. I know it as well as April does.

Her hand falls back to her lap. “Okay, so what’s the problem? Who’s not speaking to who?”

“Whom,” I instinctively correct her.

Manicured brows gather over the bridge of her nose and her eyes roll up to the ceiling. “We’re not in English class, so please spare me the lecture. Honestly, you’re incorrigible.” She sticks out her tongue. “But I should get extra marks for my exemplary use of incorrigible.”

I can’t help but laugh. April has a knack for that—turning my melancholy moods around.

“So who is it, you or him?” she asks, continuing to prod.

I summon one of my most aggrieved looks.
Who me? Never.

“Okay, so it’s not you,” she concludes. With her thumb under her chin and her index finger pressed against her pursed lips, she takes on
The Thinker
pose. “Did you ever find out why he never spoke to you in high school?” she asks after several seconds of silence.

I shake my head.

“Then you need to talk to him. I know you and I bet it’s eating you up inside, not knowing why.”

“Maybe it’s because he’s an ass and likes to play games,” I mutter snidely, not feeling charitable.

April’s jaw juts out mulishly. “Liv,” she reasons, drawing out my name, “you need to do this. Let’s not even pretend you don’t like him, plus he’s Troy’s roommate. Don’t you want us to be able to hang out together and have a good time?”

My mouth snaps closed, her words effectively cutting off any further argument I would have made.

Uncrossing her legs, she swings her feet to the floor and stands above me, hands perched on her hips. “And there’s no time like the present. C’mon, get off your butt and go over and talk to the guy before your French class tomorrow.”

Self-preservation, a powerful, basic instinct, kicks in. “I’m not going—”

“Yes. You. Are.” Her expression, her stance, the stubborn jut of her chin indicates she’s declared war on me. Which means she’s prepared to harangue me until I throw up the white flag of surrender because I can’t take it anymore.

“Fine,” I say grimly and push to my feet. “I’ll go talk to him if it’ll get you off my back.” What I really intend to do is spend the next half hour driving around, wasting time and gas on this futile endeavor.

April doesn’t try to hide her smile of triumph. “And don’t even think about pretending to talk to him. I’ll find out if you did or didn’t.”

Right, Troy.

I narrow my eyes at her. “You know, you’re a cruel, cruel bitch.”

April’s tinkling laughter is the only reaction I elicit from her.

~*~*~

As I stand outside Zach’s apartment, my thoughts are chaotic and the urge to flee nearly drives me back to the safety of my car.

But April’s right, I have to do this for me. I’ve been living with this thing between us for over four years now and I need to put an end to it one way or another. And she’s also right when she said I want to know. I do. A lot. On some of my braver days in high school, I’d actually thought about confronting him and asking him what was his beef with me. Of course I hadn’t, and now it’s like I’m stuck in that place. A place I need to get out of. 

I summon my courage and knock briskly on the door. Seconds later, I hear the sound of advancing footsteps. There’s a pause and I presume either he or Troy is using the peephole, then the door opens to reveal a barefooted Zach, hair mussed, dark stubble shadowing his jaw, and his eyes looking like he just woke up.

“Olivia.” There’s both surprise and puzzlement in his voice.

I so wish my name didn’t sound so damn sexy coming out of his mouth.

“Can I come in?”

“Um, sure.” He steps back, opening the door wider for me to enter.

I follow him to the living room, where he gestures toward the couch. “You wanna sit?” he asks, plowing his hand through his hair.

I shake my head in refusal. With what I’m about to say, I’m better off standing. I take a deep breath and take the leap.

“Why don’t you like me?” I meant to sound cool and decisive, like my reason for asking wasn’t entirely personal. Instead I ended up sounding hurt, a reediness to my voice I don’t like.

Clearly caught off guard by the question, he blinks and his head jerks back. “What?”

“You heard me.” My voice is stronger now and has the edge I’d been striving for but couldn’t master before.

For several seconds he says nothing, just stares at me with unblinking eyes before emitting a husky laugh. Something that isn’t a smile or a smirk tips the corners of his mouth. With his head tipped back, he stares down at me. “Why do you think I don’t like you?”

The sound of his voice is sexy as all get out. And I’m sure he knows it and uses the knowledge like a weapon. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll ever let him know how well it works on me.

“I don’t
think
it, Zach, I
know
it.”

I’m not sure what I expect him to say much less do but now that I’ve finally put the question out there, I’m dying to see what he’ll do, what he’ll say.

Dying.

But all he does is continue to stare at me. So long that my hard-fought bravado starts to wilt. Worse than that, the way he’s looking at me is causing havoc with my breathing and my heart is beating double time.

“I don’t hate you.” His tone is reassuring but there’s a rough edge to his voice that causes a shivery sensation at the nape of my neck. His voice has a way of doing crazy things to my insides. I don’t like that.

“I didn’t say you hated me, I said you didn’t like me, there’s a difference.” Perfect, now I sound like a professor.

One corner of his mouth lifts and amusement lights his eyes. “Oh yeah? What’s the difference?”

“Hate is too strong a term. Dislike is more passive and not as forceful or volatile an emotion. ” It wouldn’t surprise me if he pulls out a notepad and starts taking notes. I can’t believe I’ve managed to screw this up.

Folding his arms across his chest, he steadily regards me, his back braced against the off-white living room wall.

“I don’t dislike you.”

“You either do or you did.” No one goes to school with someone for four years and hardly speaks two words to them. Even the girls who’d spread rumors about me had occasionally thrown me a fake smile.

I sigh. It appears I’m
not
going to get the truth from him. “Never mind, you’re not going to admit to it and instead of ignoring me and pretending I don’t exist like you did in high school, you’re going to be all fake to me now that we’re in college. Don’t worry I get it.”

I turn and start to leave.

With snakelike speed, his hand shoots out and grabs my arm. His grasp is firm and unyielding like a human vise. My gaze snaps to his face and then down to where he’s holding me. Touching me.

His gaze follows mine. A heartbeat of a second ticks before either of us move.

“Fake?” he asks, his eyes narrowed. “
You
are calling
me
fake?”

His gaze drops to my breasts. And there is no denying that’s where he’s looking when my nipples begin to pebble under his scrutiny.

Flustered, I yank my arm and he immediately releases it. “Yes, fake. Like you were when we came over for dinner. You said you wanted to clear the air, that you wanted to be friends. You were actually nice that night. That’s the kind of fake I’m talking about.”

Zach straightens to his full height, which means he’s towering over me. It makes me wish I’d worn boots with higher heels. He whistles long and low under his breath, his expression inscrutable.

In an apparent game of tit-for-tat, he turns to leave. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” he mutters, speaking low enough that I have to strain my ears to make out what he said. But I can and I do.

Now I’m the one grabbing him by the arm and it’s one-hundred-percent-solid muscle that my hand can’t even span halfway, which means I physically cannot stop him from leaving.

“What exactly does that mean? Are you calling
me
a hypocrite?”

He halts mid-stride and looks down at my hand on his arm the same way I’d just done. His mouth tightens as he raises his eyes to meet mine. “If the shoe fits.” Again his gaze drops to my breasts.

It takes several seconds before I finally,
finally
comprehend what is going on. If it wasn’t so utterly insulting and erroneous, it would have been laugh-out-loud funny. Right now, I’m so
not
in the mood to laugh.

“Oh. My. God. You think I have implants.” And to think I’d been a little turned on when he’d been staring at my breasts. The whole time he’d probably been wondering how much they cost and if they feel the same as real ones.

“Hey, what you do with your body is your business.”

When it looks like he’s going to turn away again, my hand tightens on his biceps.

Ever so slowly, he turns around and regards me. I drop my hand from the warm flesh of his muscled arm.

“You’re right, it’s no one’s business, but just so
you
know these,” I gesture pointedly at my breasts with both index fingers, “are real. I never got implants despite rumors to the contrary.”

Later on, when I’m away from this
Twilight Zone
experience, I’ll be mortified at what I’ve done. But in the here and now, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him walk away thinking my boobs are fake.

It’s funny, in high school I’d been pretty good at ostensibly shrugging off the rumor. I couldn’t care less about it now. However, the thought of
Zach
believing it turns me certifiable because when his gaze drops to my breasts for the third time, I do something the sane, logical Olivia would never do.

Never do.

I grab both his hands and press them against my breasts.

For what feels like the longest seconds of my life, his hands—large hands—are palming me. I register their heat through the fine wool of my lilac sweater. What also registers is how much I like the contact.

As quickly as I put his hands there, I jerk them away and take a halting step back. My breathing is reedy pants of air. I don’t want to look at him, not when sanity has returned and my face is scorching hot. But I do. I look up at him, directly in the eye.

I almost sag in relief when I discover that Zach isn’t looking at me like I’ve just sprouted two heads. But my relief is short-lived because the way he
is
looking at me makes my stomach clench and a hot rush of desire courses through me.

Glittering awareness sparks in his eyes. So sexy and hot it’s hard for my rubbery legs to hold me up. Then his eyes get that sleepy look, stealing much-needed air from my lungs.

“How long you been wanting to do that?” he asks, his voice low and husky. He knows. He so knows.

Four years.

“I d-didn’t want to—I mean, I don’t know why—I did it because you make me so mad.” My mind is as jumbled as my words. I hate that being this near him makes me feel out of control and so completely out of my depth.

His response is a throaty chuckle and I seriously think dying of embarrassment would be preferable to facing him right now. Forest fires have nothing on the blaze burning my face.

I hadn’t come here for this, to dredge up all the implants crap. And I don’t know what to do or what to say. But I know I have to soldier through this some way. “Sophomore year, Ralph Buckley shot up four inches over the summer and no one said a word. When I-I came back—” I’m so embarrassed, I can’t get the rest of the words out.

“Olivia.” He steps closer, bringing our bodies within inches of each other. Slowly, giving me enough time to protest, to scream, to react the way any woman would if she didn’t want a man’s hands on her, he cups my breasts. Breathless, I watch as he thumbs my stiff nipples. The shock of pleasure leaves me gasping and clutching his forearms.

When I look up at him, his eyes are glazed over with the same desire I know is reflected in mine. I feel like I’m standing on a precipice and what I
want
to do and what I
have
to do are not remotely in concert. But I haven’t lived eighteen years of my life holding on to railings only to fling myself off a cliff without knowing there’s a safety net below to break my fall. And there’s no doubt that I’m falling.

“Zach.” His name is a shivery exhalation filled with both desire and fear.

He lifts his heavy-lidded gaze to mine and I get the small satisfaction of seeing he looks as dazed as I feel.

I take a shaky step back and his hands fall to his sides. Visibly trembling, I pull the zippered edges of my coat together, covering breasts still tingling from his touch and wrap my arms around myself.