Forever With You (Silver State Series) (36 page)

“I have to go,” she murmurs as she scoots off the bed; the shirt she’s wearing rides up, revealing her entire leg and the edge of her lace panties.  I sit up, too, but keep the comforter over my lap to conceal the rather fierce case of morning wood I’m currently sporting – although it may be a moot point, considering she was just under here with me and may very well have felt it.

I watch helplessly as she steps back into her jean skirt and lifts the t-shirt she’s wearing to fasten it around her slim hips.  Meanwhile, I will my body to cooperate by redistributing the blood flow to other, less obvious organs.  As soon as I’m able I stand up, letting the covers fall away.  Tawny glances up at me; I try not to feel so pleased as her eyes sweep up and down my body, obviously checking me out. 

“Where will you go?” I ask her nervously, forcing my thoughts back to the situation at hand.

“Back to my room,” she says.  “Jesus, Vivian is probably freaking out.”

“Who’s Vivian?”

“She’s my friend, the one I’m staying with.  God, and my phone is dead, too.  I’m such a terrible person – she was probably worried sick when I didn’t come in last night.”

I’m relieved beyond belief to hear she hadn’t been staying with Aiden, but I can also tell she’s stressing herself out, probably more than is necessary.  I walk over and grip her shoulders, forcing her to look at me.  “Relax,” I tell her.  “It’s not like you didn’t have a lot going on last night.  I’m sure she’ll understand once you explain it to her.”

She blows out a breath.  “Ugh, that’s not gonna be easy.  She’s one of Aiden’s best friends,” she replies with a grimace.

I lift my eyebrows.  “Remember what we talked about last night,” I tell her, trying but probably failing to keep my voice light.  “No excuses.  Don’t let her try to defend him.”

She nods.  “I know.  Listen, Kyle, thanks again for everything.  You’re my knight in shining armor.”  She stretches up on her toes and kisses my cheek, then turns to walk out the door.  “I’ll call you, okay?” she calls over her shoulder.  “And I’ll get your shirt back to you.”

All I can do is nod.  I remain rooted to the spot, wanting to go after her but paralyzed with indecision about what’s best.  Somewhere deep down, I know if I want her to come back to me I need to refrain from smothering her.  I know she doesn’t want me to be her bodyguard.

“Tawny?” I say, just as she throws open the door.  She pauses and looks back, clearly impatient to keep moving.  “Be careful,” I tell her lamely.

She flashes me a quick smile in response.  “I will be.”  Then she walks out the door.

Tawny – 11:00 AM

O
h God, what was that?
  Sleeping next to Kyle again after all these months must have tweaked out my brain and caused something to short circuit.  It had felt so good, and honestly so
right –
but he was right to stop it, too.  Now is not the time – I haven’t even told Aiden yet that we’re no longer together, although I would hope that much should be obvious at this point.  Plus, something about escaping my sex-crazed boyfriend, only to have sex with somebody else, admittedly doesn’t quite add up – even if it does seem somewhat rational in my own mind.  After all, sex with Kyle is a known quantity – an
amazingly wonderful
known quantity that my body has been aching for ever since I decided to call it quits with him back in September.  My heart starts racing as I think of what Kyle said about picking back up…“later.” 
How much later?
I wonder. 
Pick
what
back up?
  I don’t think I could bear it if he just wanted to go back to the “friends with benefits” arrangement we had last fall.

I take the stairs up to the fifth floor, wanting to avoid the mainstream traffic on the elevators.  I’m apprehensive about bumping into Aiden, who’s probably been looking everywhere for me.  When I walk into room 526, Vivian bounds off the bed and rushes toward me.  “Oh sweet Jesus, thank
God
you’re okay!”

She leads me by my elbow into the room and parks me at the foot of her bed.  “Tell me what happened,” she demanded.  “Brady’s been texting me – he says Aiden is inconsolable, he’s basically catatonic.  Did you guys break up or something?”

I take a deep breath.  My instinct is to avoid this conversation at all cost, but I know I can’t – I can tell Viv has been legitimately concerned, as I expected she would be.  “Just...sit down.  I’ll explain everything.”

Vivian moves like a robot as she lowers herself onto the mattress.  I twirl my hair up into a ponytail and secure it with the elastic around my wrist, stalling for time while she looks at me.  Before I can begin, she opens her mouth again.  “Wait – where’d you get that shirt?” she asks me.  “Is it Aiden’s?”

“No,” I reply simply.  I sigh as I sit down beside her and begin telling her the story of everything that’s happened since eight o’clock last night.  Just as Kyle urged, I make no excuses for Aiden.  He gave up all future rights to saving face the moment he pushed me to do something I wasn’t ready for.

Vivian’s face transforms from shock to horror as I tell her, in so many words, what happened with Aiden.  It’s clear her allegiance has shifted – when I came in she was ready to throttle me for stranding my boyfriend, but now she’s ready to go on the war path against him.

After I’ve talked her down from her state of bloodlust, her eyes seem to refocus.  I know the next part of the conversation will be even harder – because I have no idea how I’m going to tell her about Kyle.  I already know how it would sound if I told her I ran directly to another guy’s room and ended up sleeping next to him – even if sleeping really was
all
we did
. 
(Well, and make out a little bit – Christ, I really am a man-eating tramp.)

“Thankfully someone was running past when we were under the bridge,” I begin.  “It was a friend I know from school, actually.  I was able to get away and come back up here – I knew Aiden wasn’t in any condition to talk about what happened at that point, and honestly, I wasn’t either.  I fell asleep in my other friend’s room, because I was just so exhausted – this shirt is just a loaner.  I’m really so sorry I didn’t come back last night or call.”  I exhale a pent-up breath, hoping she won’t ask me any more questions. 

I look at Viv beseechingly, but it’s clear from the look on her face she’s already forgiven me.  I can tell she wants to ask more questions, but she seems to sense I’m already drained from rehashing the painful details.

“So obviously you broke up with him,” she says.  “God, after the other night with that girl at the club, and now
this
– holy hell, I never thought I’d see the day Aiden would turn into such a fuckweasel.”

Now
that
I can’t help laughing at.  I clap my hand over my mouth to suppress the giggle, but Vivian smiles encouragingly, if a bit sadistically, at me.  “I have to call Brady,” she says as she hops off the bed.  “He knew something was up, but Aiden hasn’t breathed a word to him about what happened.  Not that he
would
…goddamn coward.”

She picks up the phone, but then pauses with the receiver halfway to hear ear.  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

She drops the phone back in its cradle and spins around to look at me.  “Screw calling.  I’m going over there.”

My shoulders sag.  “What?  Really?”

She’s already cramming her feet in a pair of tennis shoes and tugging on the laces.  “Why not?  It’s our last day here, and I intend on making it a good one.  Nothing will help me feel better than giving that jackass a piece of my mind.  You can come if you want.”

She looks at me expectantly, but I shake my head.  “Have at it.  I don’t want to see him.”

She jerks her head in a nod.  “Smart girl.  Back in a flash.”

12:00 PM

V
ivian was practically breathing fire when she got back to our room thirty minutes after leaving.  She reported that Aiden was appropriately contrite, but that he was in denial over what this means for our relationship. 
Just what I was afraid of.

“Just consider it handled for now,” she said.  “Brady promised to keep Aiden far away from both of us today, probably because he doesn’t feel like watching me beat the shit out of him.”

Knowing I won’t have to see him today went a long way toward helping me feel less burdened by the whole, messed up situation.  So, at Viv’s insistence, I finally consented to going downstairs for lunch and a dip in the pool.  I put on my sexiest bathing suit, the leopard print one I had yet to wear because I was saving it for a special occasion.  It has a twisted bandeau top with push-up padding that accentuates my cleavage, and the low-riding bottoms have golden O-rings at the hips.  I had picked it out at Victoria’s Secret with Aiden in mind, but now I find I’m glad he won’t be seeing me in it.  Strange how quickly things can change.

We eat Cuban sandwiches in the poolside cantina, then take our towels out to the pool area.  We’re lucky to find two lounge chairs together in the sun at the edge of the water.  For a while we laze in the sun, gazing past the infinity edge of the pool to the ocean.  I avert my eyes from the north end of the beach, where the dreaded boardwalk is, choosing to fixate instead on the huge boulders and sheer cliffs to the south.

“All right, friend, I’m sweating under the tongue here,” says Vivian.  “Let’s get in and cool off.”

“Okay,” I reply.  “Let me run get a refill on my water, and I’ll be right there.”

I pick up my glass, which one of the pool attendants has kept replenished for me for the past hour – suddenly I feel the need to stretch my legs a bit.  I walk over to the poolside bar and stop in my tracks when I realize Kyle’s friend Macary is one of three girls clustered near the counter to the left – she’s wearing the same purple bikini she was wearing the last time I saw her.  I try to draw as little attention to myself as possible as I wordlessly slide my water glass to the bartender and wait for her to refill it.  Meanwhile, I can’t help but listen to their conversation.

“I can’t believe he ran you off for some other girl,” says one of her friends.  “It’s so obvious he’s into
you
.”

Macary shakes her head.  “I can’t figure it out either.  The thing is, I
know
I’ve seen her somewhere before – I just can’t quite put my finger on where.  I’m pretty sure she goes to Nevada though.”  She sighs.  “I don’t know, girls, maybe we just misread the signals.  Maybe I’m not the one he wants.”

The third girl snorts derisively.  “Why was he making out with you in the hot tub the other night then?”

A smile spreads over Macary’s face.  “Good question…”

My eavesdropping is interrupted when the bartender sets my water back down; I jump when the glass thuds loudly against the ceramic tile of the counter.  “Thank you,” I murmur as I grab it and quickly walk away, my heart hammering in my chest.

Of course I know they were talking about Kyle.

Kyle – 2:30 PM

L
eila has some stomach thing – she thinks it was something she ate.  Les was up with her all night, but this morning she insisted he go do something to enjoy our last day of vacation.  When we heard Steph, Rochelle and Macary were heading down to the pool, Les saw it as a perfect opportunity for us to sneak away and have some man-to-man bonding time.

I was reluctant to leave the hotel, knowing it would be impossible to keep an eye on Tawny, or on Aiden for that matter, if we left, but of course I couldn’t tell Les any of that.  We ended up getting a twelve o’clock tee time for a round of golf on one of the par-3 courses.  Les was raised a golf nut, whereas my golf skills are virtually non-existent, but I was at least able to appreciate the drink service.  While Les tried his damnedest to play a game his old man would be proud of, I spent most of my time nursing Coronas and trying not to worry about Tawny, or to dwell too much on what happened this morning.  Unfortunately, our kissing was just enough to re-whet my appetite – it’s been nearly impossible to think about anything else.

We’ve just gotten back to the hotel after grabbing a late lunch.  Les went to check on Leila, and I’m changing into my trunks to go for a swim.  It’s easy to get overheated out on the green, and being submerged in water sounds heavenly right about now.

I grab a towel and head down to the beach.  The pool is unsurprisingly more crowded than the sand.  I see Macary and the other girls sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling their feet in, and I’m glad to be able to keep walking – I don’t even want to know what Macary told them about me when I more or less kicked her out of my hotel room last night.  I know I still owe her an explanation, but it’ll have to wait till she’s not in the company of the other vultures.

After going for a swim in the cool salt water, I towel off and head back up to the pool deck; I push through the gate just in time to see Les walking out in his swim trunks and flip flops.  “Hey man,” he greets me.  “You find a place to sit out here?”

“No, I was out on the beach.  I just got here.”

Les nods as he looks around.  “There’s Steph,” he says, nodding toward her and the other girls.  “Let’s see if we can share with them.”  I follow after him, scanning the pool as we walk.  I about fall over when I notice Tawny climbing out of the pool, her long, lean body slick with water.  The vision is almost surreal –
holy fuck
,
what is she wearing?
  Her top barely covers her tits, and metal loops in her bottoms bare the smooth, tanned skin at her hips.  I unwillingly pull my eyes away from her, only long enough to glance around for Aiden.  There are plenty of other guys checking her out (and who can blame them?) but thankfully no Aiden.

I bump into Les when he stops in front of me; he turns around to shoot me a look that says,
What the hell?
but doesn’t speak.  I glance down at Macary and the other girls, then back up at Tawny, who has yet to notice me.  “Absolutely, join us!” I can hear Steph saying in response to Les’s question as I continue to watch Tawny.  She walks back around to the deep end and yells something to a girl with short, dark hair who’s still bobbing around in the water.  The girl yells back something I can’t make out, and Tawny laughs, then crouches down a little and raises her arms up over her head, flattening her biceps against her ears.  I hold my breath as I watch her dive, her body slipping gracefully into the water from her fingertips to the tips of her toes. 
Christ
, I never knew diving could be so erotic.