Perfectly Unmatched (17 page)

And I’d thrown that away.

“Wait.” Lala narrows her eyes and leans close, the smell of coffee and cigarettes and heady perfume cracking me upside the head. “Benelli told you that?”

“Yes. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.” What kind of guy am I? Taking her most personal secrets and using them as leverage in some asinine attempt to...what?
To win her? To hold onto her?

She’s not mine and never will be. As ridiculous as it is to be so upset by that fact when I’ve only just gotten to know her, I am. I am furious and regretful and pissed at the fucking world. If I didn’t get a chance with her, I almost wish she’d never tumbled into my lap that day by the lake.

Almost.

Lala
is holding another damn cigarette in her mouth, unlit, and she’s moving it up and down as she mulls over the information I just provided her with.

“What exactly did she say?” She takes the unlit cig and throws it to the side, all her attention stampeding my way.

Now I know saying anything was a colossally bad idea. “Forget it,” I attempt.

I know she’s not going to let this one go so easily.

“Back up, Professor. Benelli never, ever lies to me, but she just might have let me believe that she had sex with Damian. If she hasn’t, I want to know. Now.” Her voice is low and sexy with the delicious scratch of domination.

“Then maybe you should ask her,” I fire back.

“I have sway with her, Cormac,” she says to my back as I get up to leave the table. “I can be an alibi for the two of you if that’s what she wants. I’m still making sure she gets her ass married, but I want to know about the sex.”

It’s an offer I’m in no situation to refuse.

I swallow hard against the self-loathing that’s jammed low in my throat. But she pitched, and, if I don’t take a swing, I may be out of the game entirely.

“She’s a virgin. Last night she told me that she wanted something of her own. Something outside the whole arranged marriage scenario. She asked if I would...consummate...”

“Ugh.” Lala groans, then laughs, all her magnificent white teeth glinting in the early morning light. “I swear you’re the one guy who could ruin a sexy English acccent. Consummate? Jesus Christ on a cracker, Cormac. She wanted to have sex. Just say it.”

I shake my head and walk away with real intent this time. She calls my name twice, but I don’t answer, and I’m shocked when she suddenly grabs my elbow a few hundred yards away.

“Please. I said too much already. Please leave this whole thing be and forget you talked to me about it at all,” I beg.

“Good...lord...
Cormac,” she wheezes, bent over at the waist, one manicured hand pressed to her chest. “I smoke two packs a day and I’m running in four inch heels on the damn cobblestones to catch you. You can listen, okay?” She pushes her hair out of her face and stands straight up and catches her breath. “Okay. Listen to me. You can’t say ‘have sex.’”

“Of course I can say it,” I snap.

She shakes her head so hard, all that pretty gold hair falls into her eyes. “No, no, hear me out. You can’t say ‘have sex’ with Benelli because it wouldn’t be that for you, would it?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Lala, please. This is a whole complicated scenario. I never imagined it would be this twisted. I care for her, so the best thing I can do is walk away.”

“You can’t.” She darts in front of me, swaying on her high shoes. “Listen to me. When I saw the way you two looked at each other before, I wanted to get in the way, because I don’t want
Benelli to get hurt again. But she’s going to marry whoever makes sense for her family. That’s just who she is. That’s how she works. I thought she had her fun with Damian. And I hated him for breaking her heart, but I thought she had that one thing for herself.”

“Sex?”
I ask, my voice snide, because Damian and his disgusting cheating deserve vulgarity and crudeness.

“Not just sex.”
Lala bites her lower lip. “Benelli gives up on herself all the time. So I understand what she wants. Maybe she and her husband will wind up falling madly in love and it will all work out. But if it doesn’t, I think she deserves one wild, young, crazy fling with the guy she can’t have, you know? I mean, that’s part of being young, right? That freedom?”

“I know this will probably seem like a huge joke to you, but it makes me upset to think that I’ll just be some fling for her. It feels cheap.” Maybe I sound like an enormous
wanker. I don’t care at all. Benelli isn’t just some girl to toy with.

“You won’t be.” For the first time since I met her,
Lala drops the primping and bossing and threatening and just speaks, and I believe her. I truly do. “You’ll be something completely hers, and the memory of what you had? That will be with her forever.”

I believe her, but I don’t like it.

“I don’t like it.” I say aloud what’s sticking hard in my brain.

“You don’t have many options,
Cormac.” Lala puts her hand on my arm and squeezes. “I see how you guys look at each other. You can’t be together forever, but you can have this one perfect summer. You know how many people would kill for that?”

“What about her little leather book?
Her dates?” I demand.

Lala
shrugs. “She’ll have to go out, of course. There’s still an endgame to all this. But her parents aren’t going to expect her to stay holed up in the house. She’ll be allowed to go out with me...and I could conveniently lose sight of her for a while if needed.” She raises her light eyebrows at me over and over.

“Stop doing that. You make the whole thing feel
more tawdry that it is, and that’s quite a feat,” I mutter.

She puts her arm around my waist and leans her head on my shoulder. “Do you always talk like that? You sound like you’re in one of those boring BBC shows
Benelli makes me watch. Walk me back to Abony’s.”

We do walk back, and I hope to catch a glimpse of
Benelli, but there’s none to be had. Lala gets my number before she goes.

“I’ll text you, Romeo,” she singsongs as she strides into the little house with the kitchen where
Benelli almost took the skin off my knuckles. The house with the yard where I started to kiss her and had to stop.

That’s our pattern so far. We start and stop. Start and stop. What would it be like to start and never
stop. I can’t think of finishing, because something tells me I’d never get my fill of her, never not want to touch her or be touched back.

The rest of the day is a long, painful sludge through pages of translations that blur in front of my eyes. When my phone buzzes, I don’t even have the cool calm to wait. I juggle it like an inept clown and read the massively
emoticon-filled text.

“Come to the house at 1.
Abony will be out. Benellis window is the third on the right...shell leave a light on!!!!!”

Beyond the lack of apostrophes and epilepsy-inducing blinking hearts, the message is horrifying because this is real. And not at all what I wanted.
Not at all.

I pace the room. I bite my nails. I work on calligraphy for a one-of-a-kind illustrated graphic novel of
The Odyssey
I’m doing for fun. I acknowledge that I am an
über
dork who should be thanking Aphrodite that a girl like Benelli ever even glanced my way.

But I don’t feel right. This doesn’t feel right, and I realize that means I should be handing over my man card or whatever, but I don’t care. It’s
Benelli.

She’s worth...more.
So much more.

At quarter to one, I decide that I’m going to go to her, not to share her bed, but to tell her all the things I’ve been pondering. All the things she needs to know from me. Maybe this will be goodbye, but I’m not the kind of guy who can do the whole fling thing, so that’s it.

That’s all it will be, and I’ll be okay with it.

Except then I’m in the garden, and I see the window with the light on. The walls of the house are made of old, sturdy stone, and there’s a drainpipe I can climb. I make my way up and balance on a jutting stone and the wide, old ledge. I manage to loosen one hand and knock at her window.

And almost get beamed in the head when she throws it open and looks down on the ground for me.

“
Benelli? I’m right here,” I whisper, and she claps a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.

“
Cormac! What the hell are you doing hanging off the wall?” She reaches for me and we manage to pull and tug until I topple over the sill and into her small, neat room.

Where mine is Spartan, hers is old floral wallpaper and a soft bed overrun with pillows. Pictures of her family are everywhere, along with a laptop, phone, and the dreaded notebook on a small desk.

“Work station?” I point and she shrugs. “Where the magic happens?”

“Are we going to talk about that?” Her voice is soft and
scolding, and I feel an immediate sense of chastisement.

“Of course not.
I didn’t come here to...I didn’t come to judge you or ridicule your choices, Benelli. I don’t mean to be an ass. Honestly, I don’t. I have so much respect for you.” I pull out her desk chair and gesture to it. She nods, I sit, and she sits on the bed, legs crossed.

“So, why did you come here?” I can see the pulse point in her neck jumping in rapid blips, like her heart is running a marathon.

“I came here to tell you that I care for you.” Her blue eyes go wide and the tiniest smile crooks on her lips and slays me. It slays me because I know it’s going to disappear before I’m through with the next dozen words. “But I can’t do this. I can’t because you’re worth too much. For a fling. You and me...we have something. And if we could...if there was a choice or another direction, um, I guess what I mean is--”

“Stop,” she whispers, and it’s like a mercy-killing for all my disjointed thoughts. She tugs the red bandana I gave her last night from her very small shorts. “I never did think about running away.” She twists the fabric over her hand.
“Maybe because I was scared?”

“Because you were good,” I counter.

She shakes her head. “I have to tell you...what’s happening with me. To me. And if you still want out, that’s more than okay. But, I can’t just leave this all broken and unresolved. I’m going to think of you, Cormac. There will be one more man for me, maybe as soon as this summer. So I’m going to keep thinking about you. And, even if the whole...being together...isn’t going to happen, I want you to know me. Better. Okay?”

My chest feels like a troop of gorillas just hammered on it.

“Okay.” I lean forward and wait for her.

“My dad and mom, they’re not always perfect, you know?” She takes a shuddery breath and I nod to encourage her to go on. “But they love us, all of us so much. And every one of my siblings has let them down. Remy is in rehab instead of running the family so our father can step down a little. Winch abandoned us all and ran off with a girl he’d just met at community service. Colt is butting heads over wanting to play football when our father could net him so many opportunities through soccer. And
Itaca’s boyfriend joined the army, and she blames my parents, so she’s been rude and just obnoxious for months now.”

“It sounds like what I’d imagine fairly normal sibling drama is,” I muse. “I mean, I’m the only one, so I don’t really know for certain. But it sounds like the character layout for a bad sitcom.”

Benelli laughs, though I can tell she’s irritated with herself. “You have diarrhea of the mouth. Did anyone ever tell you that? You need to learn when to shut the hell up, Cormac.”

“My apologies.”
I make the ridiculous zip and lock lips motion and nod for her to go on.

As a
sidenote, I wonder how she expects me to keep quiet when she laughs so gorgeously at every asinine thing I say.

“So my father is just getting run into the ground. And if I can find the right husband, he’ll have a partner to help him. He’ll have someone he can trust, and he can take more time off. And it all sounded so damn noble, you know? Like a really good thing. Then I found out...” Her words stall and she picks at a bit of lint on her comforter.

I scoot the chair across the knotty wood floor. “What did you find out, love?”

When she looks up at me, her eyes are teary. “I found out, like, one or two family secrets. One is a definite, one I’m not sure about, but it just ripped everything apart for me. Like, I had this image in my head, and I thought I worked in all the imperfections, you know? But I didn’t. I just...I didn’t realize how...how freaking selfish they could be.” She presses a hand to her forehead. “Which sounds so dumb and naive, I guess. But they did what they did to help us.
Because my siblings were making stupid mistakes.”

Her breath comes out on a shuddery sigh.

“Benelli.” I keep my voice gentle. “Maybe you don’t need to rush the marriage thing. You aren’t in a good place right now to be thinking of forever. And I think it’s amazing that you want to help your family, but, and you can tell me to screw off at any second, maybe you need to sit down with your parents and tell them some of this if it’s bothering you.”