“Language, young lady! I don’t know where you think all those smarts you have came from, but I’m neither foolish nor blind. I know that this has to do with that Archer boy. It always does.”
I rubbed my forehead where I felt the beginning of a migraine starting; she brought them on faster than anything else. “So what if it does?”
“Oh, Shaw, when are you going to outgrow this silly crush?”
“Mom, I’m starting to get a headache. Can this wait until another time?”
She was silent for a long minute and I could feel the waves of censure over the phone.
“I’m going to invite the Davenports to dinner. You need to be there.”
“No. Not if Gabe is going to be there.”
“Yes, you will be there. Do not forget your father and I pay for your tuition.”
Great, more parental extortion. Boy was I lucky. “Yeah, fine, whatever.” I didn’t even say bye; I just chucked the phone under the other pillow and hit the lights. I had no idea how Rome thought I could fix anyone, be good for anyone, when I didn’t even have control over my own life and it was making me physically ill.
I spent the rest of the week and weekend being a good college student. I studied every chance I got, finished my lab project, got a head start on one of my papers that was due at midterm. I even managed to squeeze in some time to help Ayden study since she was struggling with I-chem and I had breezed through it. I was working on a piece for one of my prerequisite classes, a speech on why assisted suicide should be legal—superfun stuff—but the apartment was too quiet and I was tired of ignoring my phone every time it rang, fearing it would be one of my parents or Gabe. So I packed up my laptop and went down to Pikes Perk to finish it. Ayden had texted that I should just come to the bar because it was slow, but I needed a less stimulating environment and a coffee shop full of hipsters seemed to be just the ticket. I had a pile of research in front of me and a caramel latte cooling by my elbow. I was so into what I was doing that I didn’t notice the chair across from me at the little round table get pulled back until the metal legs scraped across the floor.
In fact, I was so intent on the paperwork spread out before me it wasn’t until a familiar hand with a snake tattoo and a name across the knuckles pushed shut the top of my computer that I realized I had company. I blinked in surprise and looked up to find those arctic-colored eyes watching me intently. He was still rocking the Mohawk, but now it was a shocking red and he looked ridiculously good in a tight long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans that were a little baggy. I didn’t bother to hide the fact that I was openly checking him out.
“What if I hadn’t saved any of that?”
“We’ve met, remember? I know you well enough to know you probably save after every sentence.”
It was every paragraph, but whatever. “This is kind of out of the way for you. What are you doing here?” I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in exactly ten days. The idea that he had purposely sought me out just seemed too far-fetched, so I scolded myself not to read into his sudden appearance.
“I actually went by the bar. I ran into your roommate and she told me you were probably here working on homework. Shaw, we need to talk.” I had never heard him sound so serious. It made me nervous. I needed something to do with my hands so I picked up my drink and tried to hide behind it.
“I don’t think we do.” I was halfway certain he was going to say something that was going to make me want to chuck the lukewarm coffee at his head.
He raised the eyebrow that had the double silver bars in it and leaned forward so that he was resting his elbows on his knees and staring directly into my eyes. There were interesting shadows dancing and flashing in the silver depths of his eyes that I didn’t know what to make of, but he had never looked more enticing than he did in that moment.
“Come on. You really think things can go down like they did and we just pretend like it never happened?”
“Why not? It’s what we’ve been doing and it seems to be working just fine.”
“Shaw.” He sounded exasperated. “We are not going to have seriously awesome sex—especially since it was your first time—and not talk about it. First off, I want to know what you were doing with Remy for all those years if you weren’t sleeping together. That just doesn’t make any sense. I also want to know why you took off the next morning; you didn’t even give me a chance to try to talk to you.”
I set the coffee down and pushed some of my hair out of my face. I leaned toward him so that I was almost in the same position he was. We were so close I could see each of his eyelashes as they brushed against his cheek when he blinked.
“I told you guys until I was blue in the face that Remy and I were just friends. We never, ever had any kind of romantic relationship. Our friendship was deep. It was powerful and intimate in a way Neanderthal males fail to understand, but it was never physical, and I can’t believe you thought I would stick around afterward just to have you rush me out the door the next morning. I’ve seen you in action more times than I care to admit Rule; I wasn’t going to be another one of your morning-after headaches. I have more pride than that.”
“But you were going to hold on to your virginity for twenty years and then just give it up to me for no apparent reason?” He sounded slightly put out, which made me grin.
“I had my reasons, Rule.”
“And those would be?”
“For me to know. Look, I didn’t ask you for anything after, I don’t expect anything from you, so can’t we just get over it?”
“No, we can’t.”
I reeled back a little bit and frowned at him. “What? Why not? We’ve known each other forever; this is just a thing that happened.” I flipped my wrist in a way I hoped was dismissive and went stock-still as he grabbed my hand in his much larger one. I stared, fascinated, as the tattooed digits linked with my own.
“See, this thing that happened”—his voice dropped a few octaves and I was suddenly acutely aware that the coffee shop was full, and that for whatever reason, we had garnered enough interest from the fellow patrons who were watching our interaction with rapt attention—“it wasn’t just some insignificant event that we can just ignore; believe me I tried. I went out Friday and met a smoking-hot redhead.”
I felt my face fold into a scowl as I tried to pull away from him. He smiled at me and used my trapped hand to pull me even closer. “Sadly, it took maybe five minutes to realize that I was trying to use one girl to get another off my mind, so I thought Saturday I would try for a blonde or maybe a brunette—hell, maybe both—because my head was all twisted up by a chick it shouldn’t be.”
I tugged on my hand but he just pulled me even closer, so that he was practically whispering in my ear, and I was almost sitting on his lap. I had to use my free hand to brace myself on his hard thigh. It was way too intimate, way too familiar, to touch him this way when I was trying to put distance between us. “So Nash and I went out, and there were redheads and there were brunettes and there was even a superhot chick who looked kinda like Pink, but you think any of them did it for me? No, Shaw, not one, because they fucking weren’t you. Ever since you walked out on Sunday all I’ve been thinking of is you. Now why is that?”
His words made me shiver from the inside out. “Because it was new, because we have history, and it makes it harder for you to keep me faceless and nameless. I don’t know, Rule.”
He lifted a hand and ran his thumb across the rise of my cheek. It made my breath catch and my heart start to trip over itself.
“Whatever the reason, it matters, Shaw. It matters a lot.”
“What are you trying to say, Rule?”
“I