Sweet Agony (Sweet Series Book 1) (5 page)

I didn’t know what else to do or say to get it through her head that I would never look at her that way. I sure as hell hadn’t bothered to hide my interest in other girls. Part of me had hoped that, if Ginny saw me talking to other girls, she would get the point that I wasn’t interested in her. No such luck. The thought of being a jerk to her sucked, yet I was starting to think it was what I had to do.

As I plotted the best way to set Ginny straight, a young, feminine voice calling my name caught my attention. I looked up to see my girlfriend walking toward me with a big smile. She had on tight jean shorts and a tank top that barely covered that bra I wanted into so badly.

I stepped onto the sidewalk, calling out to her, “Hey, babe.”

The final B sound was barely out when a small body crashed into my back. The push wasn’t enough to throw me off balance, but it did remind me I had a problem trailing me.

Reaching back, I grabbed one of her arms and pulled her fully onto the sidewalk by my side then waved toward my front door, telling her, “Go inside.”

A disappointed look came over her face as I turned back to face Amber, basically dismissing her.

Amber’s eyes looked at her curiously. “Who’s that?”

Shrugging a shoulder, I replied, “Just the kid across the street, my little sister’s friend.”

Amber laughed at my kid reference, but my stomach dropped a little at Ginny’s gasp. It was a totally dick thing of me to do, but I wasn’t about to tell Amber everything about Ginny. The more people thought Ginny was just the girl across the street, the less I had to deal with.

I heard her footsteps as she scurried away. I didn’t bother to see if she was upset. Ginny would forgive me later; it was just how things were.

A hand on my chest distracted me from my thoughts, pulling my focus back to my girlfriend.

She took a quick peek at my house before leaning forward to whisper, “Do you think you could give me a kiss before your parents catch us?”

It was my turn to look up at my house. I didn’t see anyone watching us, but I didn’t want to take the chance of getting caught making out with my girlfriend. My mom would blow a gasket.

Shaking my head, I told her, “No way. My parents would catch us for sure.”

Amber dropped her lips into a pout that made me think of kissing, and kissing made me think of getting my hand up her shirt again. That was when the mother of all ideas came to me.

Grabbing her hand, I dragged her down the sidewalk at a fast clip.

“Where are we going, Lucas?”

“To the shed in Johnny’s backyard. It has a door that’s unlocked, and Johnny’s gone with his family for the whole weekend.”

Amber giggled again. The sound grated on my nerves, but I could deal with it if she let me get her bra off this time.

Ginny

Twelve Years Old

“Why are you watching that loser through the window, girl?”

My best friend was awesome. Olivia totally didn’t get my obsession with her eldest brother, but as she liked to say, “I love you, anyway.”

She probably thought my crush on Lucas would come and go, but I didn’t think it ever would. Olivia just didn’t understand. In fact, I knew my crush on him would never go away, because it wasn’t just a crush. It was
more
, so much more.

It took me a couple of years to realize it, but I finally figured it out this year. Lucas Young was my knight in shining armor.

That might seem like a silly thought to some, but to me, it made perfect sense. See, Lucas had always been there to save me, even when he didn’t know it.

He had literally saved me when I was seven when Olivia and I had been kicking a soccer ball around in her front yard, and she had accidentally kicked it into the street. Being a typical kid, I hadn’t been paying attention, so I had run out into the street after the ball, right into the path of a car. Somehow, Lucas had been there to grab my hand and pull me out of the way before it could run me over.

The next time, Lucas had saved me from myself.

I was a certified klutz. I could trip over my own shoe laces. I could bang my knees into furniture that seemed to transport itself directly into my path. I could also walk into sliding glass doors. It seemed I also had to prove I could lock myself in a closet that had no lock.

Don’t ask me how it happened because, to this day, I still didn’t understand. What I did know was, one minute, I had been stepping into a slightly oversized linen closet, and the next, I had been stuck in a pitch black closet, having a total melt down.

Being trapped made me feel like the walls were closing in on me. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t escape the memories. Flashbacks of my mother shoving me into the back of my closet to hide when my father would come home angry and violent had bombarded me. The harsh sounds of a hand slapping skin and my mother’s cry of pain had echoed in my head.

I knew my mother had only been trying to protect me from seeing my father slap her around, but she had inadvertently made me terrified of tight, suffocating, dark spaces.

Those were all memories I had done my best to forget, perhaps pretend it had never happened. However, when I had found myself trapped in the darkness, I had been forced to remember. The more I had remembered, the harder it had become to breathe, and my head had felt like it had been drowned in fogginess.

Then Lucas had been there. He’d gently pulled me out of the pitch black closet, out into the brightly lit hallway, and into his arms. That was when I knew Lucas Young really was my knight in shining armor, and I loved him.

That was two years ago, and my feelings for him had only changed in the sense that my love for him had grown. I loved Lucas Young with my whole heart, and one day, he was going to marry me. He just didn’t know it yet.

It stunk that he was outside, talking to that girl who looked at him like she wanted to kiss him.

Olivia poked my arm because I wasn’t answering her then pushed me over so she could look through the blinds of her bedroom window, too. When she saw Lucas talking to the girl, she gasped.

“Ooooooo … He’s talking to a giiiiiiiiirl! Was she out there when you came over?”

Nodding, I answered, “Yeah. He told her I was just the kid across the street.” I tried to keep my tone even and failed. It killed me to think he didn’t see me as anything more than the neighbor.

My best friend gasped again. “He didn’t!”

Embarrassed, I mumbled, “Yeah.”

She grabbed my shoulders then slowly turned me away from watching Lucas. “Ignore him, Ginny. My brother is a total punk. I don’t see why you like him so much.”

I tried to hide how much Lucas’s words had hurt me, but I guessed I didn’t do a good enough job, because Olivia offered, “You want a hug?”

I shook my head and whispered, “Ice cream.”

Olivia giggled. “Because ice cream cures everything?”

“Yep.”

She smiled at me. “Ice cream is way better than my brother any—” Olivia turned toward the window as she was talking and then gasped at whatever she had seen out there.

Wondering what it was, I quickly turned to see Lucas dragging the girl behind him down the sidewalk and disappearing into Johnny Whitmore’s yard. I wasn’t sure why they were going over there, yet I had a feeling it was something they shouldn’t be doing.

Olivia turned and started stomping toward her door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

Without looking back at me, she answered, “To get you ice cream and rat my brother out.
Mooooooooom
!”

Chapter

5

Lucas

Sixteen Years Old

Something happened after I turned sixteen, and I saw Ginny in a new light.

One night, I went to bed grumpy because she had been blushing while my sister giggled half the day in our backyard pool while I had been shirtless in my swim shorts. Then, the next day, I had been walking with my friends down the street to the movie theater, and as we’d walked, we had passed Ginny sitting by herself under a tree in a local park. Once again, she had been oblivious to everything around her, totally focused on the pad of paper as she drew.

The sun had made her blonde hair glow like a halo around her head, reminding me of the Christmas tree angel I had thought she looked like when I’d first laid eyes on her. Even in her slouched form, I could make out the delicate lines of her petite body that was starting to show the barest hint of curves.

Something about the scene had hit me square in the chest. She was beautiful … and at that moment, I had the overwhelming urge to tell everyone she would be mine. Slowly, my mind had taken everything in.

I’d almost groaned out loud when I had seen her straight, white teeth bite her bottom lip in concentration. The vision of her doing something else with those lips had made my dick harder than the first time I had seen a nudie magazine.

Of course, my shithead best friend Johnny had to ruin the moment by saying something about how he thought Ginny would have a nice rack one day. The comment, something both of us had said more than once about other girls, almost caused me to trip over my own feet as a strange anger overtook me. Suddenly, I had wanted to punch Johnny in the face, knock him the hell out. The feeling was completely foreign to me. Why the hell would I want to punch my best friend over a girl who was like a sister to me?

As I had ignored Johnny and continued staring at the girl who was lost in her own little world, the truth had crashed over me like a sledgehammer to the head. You weren’t supposed to feel this way about your sister. You weren’t supposed to even feel this way about a girl who was just a friend. Hell, I had never even felt that way about one of my girlfriends.

Holy shit! It was the way Dad felt about Mom.

That was when I had realized I had a major complication.

I was sixteen, and she was thirteen. If I touched her, that would have been grounds for statutory rape. There had been a senior last year who had gotten himself tangled up with a freshman. When things went too far and her parents found out, he’d landed himself in a mess of trouble. Not to mention, absolutely no one around us would approve. Sure, her friends might have thought it would be cool for her to date an older guy, but my friends and all the kids at my school would laugh their asses off. What was more, no adult would be cool with that kind of age gap.

I might want Ginny with everything inside me, but I wasn’t stupid. I had plans, dreams. I was already talking to the Army recruiters. As soon as I graduated, I was leaving suburbia New York.

Making a decision that probably wasn’t the smartest, I had followed my gut. Instead of ignoring her, I had quickly come up with a reason to ditch my friends.

“Look, man,” I had said to Johnny. “Olivia’ll give me hell if I don’t make sure Ginny gets home before dark.” I’d shrugged, trying to play it cool. “She’s got some shit on me for missing curfew last weekend.” I had started to jog toward Ginny, calling out over my shoulder, “I’ll catch up later.”

All this had been an effort to have a fleeting moment with a girl I should have stayed away from. If only I had known it wouldn’t be the last time I didn’t have it in me to resist the pull toward her …

Ginny

Thirteen Years Old

She was missing something.

As I stared at the mermaid on the page, my mind raced. What was missing? I’d drawn and colored her in gorgeous shades of blue and teal; given her the typical human face and upper torso with a fishtail yet added scales around her eyes; webbed her fingers; and given her wispy, delicate fin-tipped ears. I’d even put a gorgeous shell in her hair.

Sure, the piece overall looked a bit monochromatic since the mermaid sort of blended in with the ocean around her, but in my head, that made sense. Something as mythical and rare as a mermaid wouldn’t be a bright shade of color or have a peachy, human skin tone. No, they would need to hide from the land dwellers who rode on boats across the ocean, so they should be camouflaged to their environment.

Still, as my fingers lightly traced over the petite lines of the mermaid’s face, I knew something was totally missing. She needed to standout somehow. Her shell was already shades of white and peach, so what else could I do to make her stand out?

Her hair! That’s what needed more color!

I grabbed my red and purple artist markers, excited about the new vision in my head. The mermaid would still have blue, green, and teal in her hair, but she needed some warmth and an exotic look. Sort of like the fish that had a spot or flashy scale to attract their prey, her hair would flow behind her like beautifully colored ribbons, both enchanting and deadly.

Before my eyes, my creation was coming to life finally. A sense of excitement energized me. My hand was steady as I used a boysenberry purple to shade random strands of the mermaid’s hair. Sitting here in the warmth of the sun with the sounds of birds singing around me and my imagination roaring to life, I felt like this moment was perfect.

Maybe being lost in my moment was the reason I never heard anyone walk up or sit down next to me. But sure enough, when I went to drop my boysenberry purple and pick up another color, I almost jumped out of my own skin when my rose red marker appeared in front of my face.

Screaming like a banshee, I tried to jump back, only to succeed in knocking my head against the tree behind me.

The marker disappeared, and a strong hand gripped my shoulder to keep me still.

Turning my head to see who it was, I was shocked speechless to see it was the one person who made my stomach do somersaults and my heart stop beating.

Lucas Young. My best friend’s eldest brother. The boy who would rather ruffle my hair and call me a kid than see me as the girl who only had eyes for him.

Not that I could blame him. He was a junior, and I wasn’t even a freshman yet.

Everything about us was totally opposite. He hung out with the varsity football team, and I sat quietly with his sister at lunch. Olivia might be a social butterfly, but I didn’t have it in me to talk to our other classmates the way she did. So while she sat and chatted away, I drew in my notebook.

Lucas wasn’t exactly an outgoing guy himself. Sure, he had loads of friends and ran with the popular crowd, but he didn’t talk much. He was more of an observer than a participator. And even though we had that in common, we were on totally opposite ends of the spectrum. He was the epitome of confidence, while I was afraid of my own damn shadow.