Wicked Restless (Harper Boys #2) (16 page)

Maybe…maybe I am a little off?

“Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. Sure. I’d love to,” I stammer. Graham slips his hand from his pocket with his phone, holding it up and ready to type.

“What’s your number? I’ll text you early in the afternoon, and we’ll find a good time.”

I pause awkwardly-long again due to the inner-dialogue I have with myself, trying to decide if this is a good idea or a bad one. Eventually, I rattle off my number, my pulse speeding up as he types into his phone.

“Well…Emma,” he says, reaching for my hand again. I give it to him, and this time his touch is a little more familiar, and a little…more. His fingers wrap around my wrist, and when I look up at him, I notice the twitch in his lips as he watches his hold on me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sounds gerd…I mean, good.
Gerd
…is just on my mind I guess…medical awards dinner and all. Oh god.” I shut my eyes as he laughs. I open them as I start to take a step toward the door. “I swear, tomorrow I’ll be back at the top of my game. Public speaking does a number on me.”

“I look forward to seeing the top of your game,” he chuckles.

I raise a hand and spin to face the double glass doors, actively thinking about pushing them open, not running into them, not tripping, and walking quickly, but not too quickly away. This is why I don’t date. Thinking of all of this, trying not to look like a jackass for a solid minute—it’s too hard. Give me advanced chem and bio, instead.

My giddiness lasts only a few minutes, and soon I’m walking back to my apartment, dreading the fact that I have a date with someone.

Handsome as he may be, Graham is not Andrew.

These butterflies are not the same.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent the night in a girl’s bed without getting something out of it. Even in Iowa, when I hooked up with girls my senior year or at junior college, I never stayed at a chick’s place without at least a hand job.

I could have had anything I wanted last night—anything…but Emma. That’s the problem. This whole thing—coming back to their apartment again, hooking up with Lindsey—it was always really about Emma.

Punishing Emma—
seeing
Emma.

I guess in a way, I’m getting something out of this, but it doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would. There must be a shred of decency left inside me, because I made out with Lindsey until my lips were raw last night, and then we just went to sleep. In her bed. Fucking spooning like we were two kids sneaking off at camp. I bet she thinks I’m this big gentleman—either that, or an enormous pussy. She kept giving me these little signs, small tugs of her shirt, little exposures of her skin that signaled it was all clear for me to keep on moving.

But I couldn’t do it.

I started stroking her hair, putting her to sleep. I panicked, like I was babysitting an infant, and just trying to put it to sleep, the whole time feeling sick as fuck to my stomach. I lay there awake holding her, wishing she were Emma. Emma—who I hate. I hate Emma. I can’t even talk myself out of hating her. Yet…I keep fantasizing about touching her instead of Lindsey. That’s the only way I can make my affection feel like it’s real. My head gets cloudier with every minute that passes in this scenario I’ve trapped myself in.

I left their apartment when the sun came up, not able to take it any more. Lindsey woke up just enough to see I was leaving, but I kissed her back to bed and slipped out her door. I should have kept walking, but my eyes caught the sleeve of Emma’s shirt hanging from the side of the trashcan. It’s like she put it there to surrender—the only flag she has to wave.

It smelled like her. She still smells the same.

I should have left it in the trashcan where she put it. But I didn’t want her to surrender. I wanted her to keep playing, to have to hold on to this stupid piece of material that I now know reminds us both of before. I want her to have to look at it, too—even if she never wears it again.

If she surrenders, I win.

Then what?

I’m kind of impressed that she sent her roommate to me wearing it. Up until now, she’s been just taking my comments and dismissing them, even when I can tell they get to her. She’s been going along with this pretense that we don’t know each other. I have been giving her nothing but shit, and she’s just been taking it.

Until now.

“Didn’t your roommate wear that yesterday?” I say in an offhanded manner as I step out into the hallway from the locker room where Lindsey’s been waiting for me. I saw her in the sweatshirt during the goddamned game, and it was the only thing I could concentrate on. I blew a major play. All I want in the world is for her to take it off, to get rid of it. I feel a little bad about my comment, though, because I see her face fall as she looks down and pulls the bottom of the sweatshirt out to look at it.

Shit…this part of my plan doesn’t feel good. Lindsey isn’t the one I mean to be provoking.

“Oh, I…yeah, I guess she did. I just like it, so she said I could borrow it,” she says. I can tell she’s lying because she’s embarrassed. Emma probably fed her some bullshit to make her feel pretty in that sweatshirt just so she’d wear it here, and I just crapped all over her. She pulls it off and folds it over her arm, though, and I smile to myself at how easy it was to take away Emma’s power.

Lindsey’s still pouting a little when I turn around. I grab my equipment bag and jerk it up higher on my shoulder, then lean into her, kissing her neck. “I like you better in your things,” I say, which makes her blush. She’s already forgotten about the sweatshirt.

“Harper, you still have to talk with coach. He’s pissed, dude,” Trent says as he comes out of the locker room, his eyes quickly noticing my date. He smirks and winks at me in front of her, which irritates me. He’s doing that eyebrow waggle too, which is only going to make Lindsey think I talk about her to Trent. I don’t. In fact, Trent doesn’t even know her name.

“I have a 4.0. There is literally nothing for me to study, so why should I waste time sitting there in the study lab,” I sigh, ready to get back to the fact that I blew my study hall hours, which I don’t need, and coach wants to bench me for it. Some system—the guy with the highest GPA gets the smack down, but Tony Agaluta, our goalie who’s flunking basic algebra, gets stickers on his goddamned helmet because he shows up at four o’clock every day for tutoring—
and still fails!

“I don’t make the rules, Harp. And neither does coach,” Trent says. Sometimes I want to punch my friend. He’s like Dudley-Do-Right, even when he’s being logical.

“Well, unless he’s planning on sitting me tomorrow, which fuck it if he is, I’m pretty sure our talk can wait until then,” I say, repositioning my heavy bag on my arm.

Trent rolls his eyes, but then turns his attention back to Lindsey. Lindsey is his type. I should just give her to him, rid myself of this entire dumb fucking idea I had.

“Hey, I’m Trent,” he says, shaking her hand.

“Hey, I’m Trent,” I repeat, mocking him. He doesn’t turn to look at me when he reaches to the side and punches me in the right peck. “Ow…fuck nut!”

“You must be Emma?” Trent asks. Fucker did that on purpose.

I’d feel bad about the look on Lindsey’s face right now except I’m pretty sure the look on mine is worse. He called her
Emma
, which means somewhere along the way he noticed that name. He saw her license once, briefly, but I didn’t think he memorized it. And I get enough from the quick glance he shoots me to know that he’s trying to make this a teachable moment.

Not in the mood, Trent. I’m so far in on a bad idea there’s really no way to get out now. Quit making it worse.

“She’s…my roommate,” Lindsey says, her voice half of the volume it was before.

“He knows that. He’s just a really shitty listener. This is Lindsey, Trent. And thanks for paying attention to me when I talk.” I lay it on super thick, and Lindsey eats it up. Trent’s eyes become slits, and I know I’ve only made him more curious. Just one more thing I’ll think about atoning for…or not. Might as well embrace this piece-of-shit guy I’ve become.

“Right, my mistake,” Trent says. What he really means is
“What are you up to, you asshole?”
I put my arm around Lindsey and lead her out ahead of him. This conversation between them—it’s done.

Trent heads to his car, and probably to Majerle’s, which is where I’d planned on going with Lindsey after the game, but now I just want to get her back to her apartment so I can go through with everything I chickened out on last night. She seems all right with it, too, her fingers hooked onto mine over her shoulder as we walk the six blocks to her apartment.

My back is killing me from carrying my gear. I normally dump it in Trent’s car, or drop it off at home before we go out, but those weren’t options tonight. Maybe I’ll somehow work a back rub out of this.

I feel a charge when we get to her front door, and I know why it’s there. It’s there because I anticipated this—the look on Emma’s face the second I walk in behind Lindsey. In a second, her eyes go from Lindsey’s to mine, and down to the sweatshirt folded over her purse.

There’s that disappointment I was banking on. I grin, and she catches it before quickly looking away.

Lindsey dumps her purse on the table as we walk in, and I take advantage of it, picking up the sweatshirt and twisting it in my hands to make it even smaller. Emma watches the entire time, her cheek caught between her teeth while she rethinks her decision to send her friend out in it in the first place.

That’s right, Emma. This bothers you more than it bothers me.

“How was the awards dinner?” Lindsey asks from behind Emma as she opens the fridge to pull out a beer for each of us.

“It was good.”

I don’t think Emma even registered her answer. She’s too busy staring at the sweatshirt—her eyes never blinking as she watches my hands work the fabric as I step closer to her.

“Here,” I whisper, handing it to her. She takes the other side, and for a second we’re both holding on, like a tug of war. Her eyes flash to mine, and I notice she stops breathing. I should stop here, but something happens when she looks at me, and I step in a little closer, close enough that I know she can feel my breath. “Are we done now?”

I let go of my grip, but I keep my eyes locked with hers. For a brief moment, she looks wounded, and I start to smile.

“I met someone,” she says. She’s speaking to Lindsey, but as the left side of her mouth starts to rise, her eyes haze, and something stronger steps in place of the girl who was letting me walk all over her a second ago.

You think I care that you met someone, Emma Burke? Go ahead—make me care.

“Oh yeah?” Lindsey moves into my side, handing me a beer. I put my arm around her and let my hand cup her shoulder. Emma’s eyes move to it, so I loosen my grip and drag my fingers along her arm suggestively, just to see if Emma’s gaze follows. It does, and I take a very satisfied, long drink, not bothering to hide the smile on my lips behind the bottle.

“Yeah,” Emma says, her voice weak again. I almost feel like I’m putting her in a trance, her eyes are tracing every single stroke of my fingers along her friend’s arm. “He’s a grad student,” she continues, telling her roommate about some boy who thought she was cute and asked her out on a date. I couldn’t care less. She says something about how he saved her, came to her rescue and got the projector working. She’s gushing over some guy who knew how to click a goddamned mouse, and she’s calling
him
her savior. The more she talks, the more I feel every scar on my body all at once—the burn marks, the stab wounds, the broken bones that never healed quite right—abuse I took so Emma Burke didn’t have to experience anything sad.

Something in me snaps.

I know it’s crossing the line when I do it, and I know that it’s going to start something that won’t end in spooning tonight. That’s why I came here, though…isn’t it? Emma keeps talking, but her eyes are constantly checking my hands. Every pass of my fingers over Lindsey’s shoulder and down her bicep moves closer to her breast, until finally, I let my thumb drag slowly along the curve of her tit, taking extra time when I feel the hard peak underneath her thin bra and shirt—and Lindsey, bless her fucking little heart, actually hums in pleasure.

“I’m seeing him tomorrow, so I’ll let you know…you know…if it’s something…” Emma cuts her story short, suddenly a lot less sure of herself. She sucks in her bottom lip as she flits her eyes to me quickly before looking down and then back up to her friend, who is now absolutely dying for me to touch her more.

That’s right, Emma. Nobody cares that you met a boy and he’s your fucking hero.

“Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m so excited for you,” Lindsey says, nothing about her focused on Emma. Lindsey is my puppet right now, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t hear anything past the part where Emma said she met someone. Everything after that was about my hand on her breast, and how fast my dick will be inside her next.

“Anyhow, I think I’ll turn in,” Emma says, faking a yawn. “That speech, it’s always hard, ya know…” I roll my eyes at her sad performance, then run my hand down Lindsey’s arm to find her fingers waiting to tug my hand and body to her bed.

“Yeah, us too,” Lindsey says at the feel of my grip. I follow her down the hall as we leave Emma alone in the kitchen behind us. I don’t care that she’s alone. I don’t care that she knows where I’m going, and I don’t care that she’s met some guy who wants to buy her coffee.

I don’t care about Emma Burke.

I step into Lindsey’s room, and she pauses at the doorway, hanging out of it to look down the hallway to her friend. That’s guilt she’s feeling. She needs to let that go.

“She’s okay,” I say, coming up behind her, breathing into her, reminding her. My fingers find her stomach, and I tug her shirt from her jeans and let my hand find her bare skin.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she says, part of her giving into me, but part of her still out there in the hallway. I can tell. I kiss her neck, moving my hand through her hair, wrapping it around my fingers. She sighs, letting her weight fall into me. I turn her to face me and lift her into my arms, my hands grabbing her ass as I walk us backward. We just need to get to her bed. She’ll forget everything there.