Collide Into You: A Romantic Gender Swap Love Story (14 page)

Glancing at him sideways, I take a sip of the delicious brew. I taste a hint of something. Cinnamon, maybe, combined with thick whipped cream.

“Something on your mind?” I ask.

He glares at me and I nearly drop my coffee. What had I ever done to deserve
that
type of look from him?

“Yes,” he says quietly, but his words are laced with venom. “Yes there is.”

Dillan

A
FTER
S
TACEY
DROPS
ME
OFF
, I discover I’m in the mood for coffee. I doubt Ellen’s Corner Bakery will even be open, but I jog over there anyway. I need to expend some energy after finding myself thinking long and hard about Alec Huffman giving Keira a ride home.

Alec Huffman. Famous. Rich. And, actually, nice. He was, after all, interested in my beer. It wasn’t one of those
“I’m just trying to be nice and make conversation”
talks. He actually meant it.

Trying Ellen’s door, it’s locked, but the lights are still on. I see a figure move in the back. Knocking loudly, the figure—Ellen—turns around, a broom in her hands. When she opens the door, her grin couldn’t have been bigger. The scent of fresh chocolate chip cookies makes my mouth water.

“I thought I might be seeing you tonight, Dillan,” she says softly, letting me inside. “I have something for you.”

I follow her to the back—I’ve never been beyond the counter before—and the area is just as cozy as the front of the bakery. Yellow walls. Purple wainscoting. Various sized frames showcasing old pictures, drawings, and crayon-colored thank-you notes written, no doubt, by children. Against a back wall, she opens the door to a silver fridge and hands me two ice-cold iced coffees.

“Two?” I ask her. Okay, I’m not
that
thirsty. I’d be up all night with this much caffeine. The cold seeps into my hands. How long had these been in her fridge?

“One is for Keira, you handsome blockhead,” she says with a laugh. She places the broom against the wall, unties her apron, and hangs it upon a hook near what looks to be the door to her office.

I inspect the plastic cups. Other than the whipped cream on top, I can’t tell what flavor they might be. “Are they the same type of coffee?”

“Nope.”

My eyes narrow at her suspiciously. What kind of game is she playing tonight? Ellen smiles mischievously.
 

“Which one is mine?”
Does it even matter? Just take a drink from one, Dillan.

“Oh, only you can decide that.” She leads me back to the front of the bakery, turning off lights as we pass through. “Tell Keira I said hello. Now, off with you,” she says as she all but shoves me out the front door.

“How much do I owe you? For the coffee?” I hold up my hands as if I need to remind her of what she gave me. By now, my hands are numb.

For some reason, Ellen laughs, and I find the entire situation to be odd. Is the old gal drunk?

“Consider it already paid for,” she says. Ellen’s light blue eyes twinkle at me. Whatever the secret is, she keeps it to herself. “Don’t forget about my anniversary celebration on Tuesday.”
 

She pats my back, closes the door in my face—all the while smiling—and locks up the bakery. She switches off the main lights, which includes the OPEN sign, and I watch her figure recede deeper into the bakery and then disappear into a door that leads to her apartment above the storefront.

What an interesting woman
, I think. Strange. Odd. Confusing, but interesting.

As I walk the quiet streets, I see a red Corvette parked on the curb in front of my apartment building. Instantly, I know it’s Alec’s car. I don’t know how I know. I just do. I shouldn’t dislike the man. In fact, the ballplayer really wasn’t that bad of a guy. But then I wait for Keira to exit the car. And she doesn’t. Not for a while.

I wait there like an idiot.
 

When she steps out, she watches Alec’s car disappear like a love-struck girl. My footsteps announce my arrival, and she turns. I hand her a cup of coffee.

I want to tell her that she’s beautiful. She smells wonderful and the little smile playing on her lips, while I know it isn’t for me, is bewitching. I want to warn her away from Alec Huffman. Say that he isn’t any good for her. That she should keep her distance. But that’d make me a hypocrite. Didn’t Jon say the exact same things about
me
to her?

So I stay silent, even as she looks sideways at me.

I get mad at myself. I get so angry that I want to squeeze the coffee cup in my hand and throw it to the ground.

Keira affects me. She affects me more than she should, more than I should let her.

“Something on your mind?” she asks.

I wanted her to ask me that and then I
didn’t
want her to ask me.

When I answer her, it comes out wrong. It comes out mean, spiteful, hurtful, and almost every emotion I could possibly feel is embedded in my words. No doubt my expression conveys the exact same emotion. “Yes. Yes there is.”

Keira blanches and nearly drops her coffee. Damn. I didn’t mean to alarm her. Well, I did, but not in
that
way. Now she probably thinks I’ve heard from Jon, that maybe there’s something wrong. I want to ease her mind. Her brown eyes are large and mixed with worry and something else. Confusion. Rage. Probably more confusion.

It might surprise her to realize that the same emotions are punching me in the head, too. Actually, I doubt Keira would care what I might be feeling at the moment. Or any moment, for that matter. Apparently she snagged a Major League Baseball player tonight. Without trying. Me? I’m just her roommate. Her
temporary
roommate.

What did I want to be to her? Obviously something more than a roommate. I can’t say that I’ve ever considered a serious relationship with anyone before. Not really. But Keira… She deserves someone better than me. Then again, I can’t seem to get over the fact that I don’t even exist to her in the first place.
 

I can’t have her. But it’s more than that. She doesn’t want me.

Is that why I’m angry right now? Is that why I’ve opened the apartment door and slammed it shut behind us? I turn on the foyer lamp, but the rest of the apartment is dark.

Keira reacts to my slamming the door. She spins around, her eyes blazing.
 

“I swear to God,” she starts. “You must be bipolar or something because you’re acting like a complete jackass right now. Either tell me what’s wrong or go to hell.” She pauses. “Or better yet, go to hell anyway. In the morning, I’m out of here. This has got to be one of the worst weeks of my life. And trust me when I say this, Dillan Pope, I’ve experienced some pretty messed-up shit before.”

I have to hand it to her, she holds her own very well. She’s no cowering fool, but I wish she’d lighten up a bit. Show some skin, so to speak. But she’s so bottled up that I feel like that any moment, she’s going to burst into a million glass fragments, and I certainly don’t want to be in her trajectory path. A cut from Keira would be like getting sliced with tiny, sharp razorblades. You don’t feel the pain until it’s too late.

So I do what I always do in uncomfortable situations: I turn into a smartass.

“Is this the part where you lecture me on what it means to be a soldier and how you’re this special snowflake in a sea of snow? If you move out tomorrow, Alec
playboy
Huffman won’t know where to pick you up.”

Her eyebrows rise. “Jealous much?” She crosses into the kitchen and tosses the empty coffee cup in the sink. I figure she’ll talk more about Alec Huffman, but she doesn’t. “Furthermore, your analogies are stupid.” Her words have a sting to them. “You don’t know the first thing about what it means to be a soldier or how serve your country, so I don’t expect you to understand honor, pride, and integrity. I certainly don’t expect you to know what it’s like to be in my shoes: a woman serving her country. So the jealous thorn burrowed up your ass tonight doesn’t mean crap to me.”

I am
not
jealous of Alec Huffman. I adjust my stance at the doorway—I haven’t moved since we entered the apartment—and confirm that, no, there’s nothing
burrowed up my ass
. Not that I really needed to check.

Her speech done, Keira leans back against the counter, her arms over her chest.
Your turn,
her body language declares. She has a bored look on her face, but I suspect it’s just a mask. Is this what she does when she faces tough situations? Shuts down and pretends it doesn’t affect her?

Does this mean she’s pretending
I
don’t affect her?
Don’t get your hopes up, Dillan. For all you know, she’s lulling you into a false sense of security before she makes you cry.
No doubt she’s seen and experienced things I could only dream of, and not all of them good. But it’s not like she was forced to enlist in the Army. No one coerced her into becoming a soldier, and no one made her stay in the Army for nine years. Her experiences, her troubles, her hardships came with the job.

I never felt sorry for her before and I wasn’t about to start now.

“So what?” I say. “Am I supposed to worship the ground you walk on because you are a woman who
also
happens to be a soldier? Big freaking deal, Keira. I bet every time you feel the least bit threatened by someone, you throw out the
I’m a soldier
bit in order to win an argument. If you want my honest opinion, it’s a
below the belt
type of statement, as if you’re claiming no one can understand where you come from and how you’re just so special and above us mere mortals. I admire your selflessness and your service to our country, but you don’t have to throw it in everyone’s face all the time. Other people have difficult jobs, too, sweetheart, myself included. I happen to work in a political minefield, but you don’t see me waxing poetically about it everyday. So here’s a bit of advice: get over yourself.”

As an encore, I finish my iced coffee, slurping rather loudly to get up the last of the whipped cream. I’m not even sure what Ellen put in the coffee before she closed her bakery tonight, but I swear I tasted chocolate laced with cayenne pepper. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she also tasted cayenne pepper in her coffee, but I figure it’s the wrong time to change the subject.

“Ditto,” Keira says. “After tomorrow, none of this matters because I have no intention of ever spending more than ten seconds in your company again. Have a nice life.” I think I hear her mumble something about me being a
man whore
under her breath.

She’s in her room before I can respond to this man whore comment. The door closes without hesitation, and she locks it, too. This time, I am certain that she’s packing. Keira won’t have a problem finding an apartment. It might take her a few days, but she can stay in a hotel or, as much as I hate to admit it, Alec might let her stay over. Then again, maybe not. Who lets someone they just met crash at their million-dollar house?

As Keira said, it doesn’t matter. When I wake up in the morning, I won’t have to worry about seeing Keira. Or thinking about her. Or wondering about her. After tonight, she is nothing to me.

Keira

M
Y
MOUTH
TASTES
LIKE
CRAP
. Good lord, what did I eat before I fell asleep? Sunlight pours in from the wrong side of the room and, for some reason, it feels like I’m naked under the sheets. Naked? That’s a stupid thought. Turning slightly, I crack my eyes—why do my eyes feel so heavy?—and find that everything is wrong.
 

The walls are painted light gray, with dark blue trim. The images on the wall—canvas-style abstract artwork—certainly aren’t mine. The television is on the opposite side of the room. The smell is all wrong. It smells like sandalwood. Like Dillan. I don’t want to be smelling like Dillan right now.

I’m in the
wrong
room.
 

Not only that, I’m in the
wrong
bed.

What? The? Hell? There is no way on earth that I climbed into Dillan’s massive, king-size bed last night. Not after
that
hellacious argument. Glancing over, I confirm that I’m alone in the bed. Thank God. Yes, there was that one time I did think about climbing into bed with him, but that was just a passing thought. A heat-of-the-moment thought. I was probably dehydrated that day.

Staring out the window, I try to figure out what time it is, but I’m momentarily distracted by the fact that the blinds and the curtains are wide open. I can see into the building next door. What on earth does Dillan do when he needs to change? Display his goods to the world? Apparently. He’s good at doing that.

I still haven’t figured out why I’m in his room, or where
the owner
is. His clock reads eight in the morning. Good. I can still go for a run before it gets too warm. Rubbing my eyes, my hands feel
weird
against my face. My face feels
weird
against my hands. I push my hands away from me and suck in my breath.

Manly hands.

Hairy and rough-cuticled, manly hands.

Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Okay, there must be a logical reason for this. Don’t hyperventilate. I eye the white sheet as if it might decide to strangle me. It’s up to my neck. My chest looks surprisingly flat. Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod. I jerk the sheet down. Flat chest. A man’s chest. A scream bubbles in the back of my throat.

It’s a dream. This has to be a dream. Surely I’m still asleep.
 

I pull the sheet lower and nearly pass out. There’s male
junk
between my legs. For some reason, taking inventory makes me feel better.

Hairy pubic mound. Check.

One penis. Check.

Two testicles. Check.

Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Holy shit…the penis…it’s
erect
. I poke it. It moves. It bounces. It’s freaking real.

That scream? It’s still in the back of my throat. I swallow hard. I throw a manly hand over my mouth to keep from yelling. The same finger that just poked the alien penis feels the front of my neck. I swallow again. An Adam’s apple. My mouth instantly dries up. I don’t think I can open my eyes any wider than they are at the moment.