Winter Break (Chasing Chase London #6)

nine

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“The Impression That I Get”—The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

When I get up from the bed and go to get a tissue from the bureau, I glimpse Oliver in the mirror buttoning his jeans, and I want to die.

“I’m really not like this, I promise,” I say, blotting the tears off my face and grabbing more tissues. I’m glad the only light is from the TV and an occasional flash of lightning, so at least he won’t see how blotchy I get when I cry. I finally return to the edge of the bed and sink down on it, not sure where to go from here.

Oliver scoots over to me and puts his arm around my back. “It’s alright,” he assures me. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m sorry I didn’t meet your expectations.”

My mouth drops open in indignation. What kind of person does he think I am?

But then, I can’t exactly argue. I must come across as a total slut, trying to sleep with some guy I met only days ago. I don’t know the first thing about him, and everything I do know, I got from Meghan, since I’ve barely said five words to Oliver before tonight. I know he’s old enough to buy whiskey, and that he doesn’t know I’m not. I know he’s from Ireland, and he’s visiting his uncle, and… That’s basically it. I don’t know his last name, or if he has a girlfriend back home, or if he likes to eat small children in his spare time.

And yet, I invited him into my room, alone, and got drunk and made out with him while my sister’s sleeping on the floor. Not to mention that sleeping with a fifteen-year-old would probably make him a felon.

Yep, I totally deserve his judgment.

He clears his throat and rubs a hand over the back of his head, staring at the floor. “It’s just that, I… Uh, I don’t have sex.”

I gape at him for a minute, trying to find words. I’m not sure I heard what I think I heard, or what it means if I did.

“Like, ever? ” I ask finally, hearing how much I sound like Daria when I told her I hadn’t.

“Like never,” he says, and I think there’s a small smile in his voice. He leans away to look at my face. I wish he wouldn’t. He has the longest, darkest lashes I’ve ever seen framing his lavender eyes, and damn if they don’t make me want to forget all the reasons I shouldn’t kiss him again.

“Wow.”

I absorb this information for a minute, trying to think straight and clear my head from the fog of alcohol and hormones. Of all the ways in which Oliver is different from the other guys I know, this one is definitely the most surprising. And he’s in college. What kind of college guy doesn’t party and hook up? That’s the whole point of college. Even my parents did that. One New Years when they went out drinking and came home loud and laughing, I heard them giving Dad a hard time about his fraternity days.

“Why?” I ask finally.

“Why do you?” Oliver asks, his brow furrowing as he glances at the glass door to the balcony when a sheet of rain crashes into it like an ocean wave.

Why does it always come back to this? Why do I always end up talking about something I wish no one knew about?

“I…don’t, actually,” I admit with a sigh. I could lie, but it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Of course I found the one celibate guy on the planet when I’m finally ready to give it up.

Oliver waits for me to go on, but least he doesn’t look at me like a mutant freak from outer space.

“I need more to drink,” I say, getting up to get the whiskey. I so do not need more to drink, but it keeps me from having to face him.

“You don’t…?” he presses when I don’t elaborate.

“No,” I say, slumping down on the bed again. “I don’t hook up.”

So much for losing my virginity to a hot college guy to get back at Todd and Elaine. It was like the perfect first-time story.

“You don’t hook up,” Oliver says, looking way too skeptical, like he thinks I’m full of shit. Not that I blame the guy. I literally burst into tears when he put on the brakes. He probably thinks I’m a complete nympho.

It should be easy to tell him otherwise and make him think well of me again, but for some reason, it’s harder than telling everyone I already knew. I only really told Daria, and she already guessed. Then she told everyone else, and I just had to confirm.

“I was, kind of, um…” I take a drink for courage. “I was just tired of being the freak. Everyone I know is always talking about it all the time, and I was tired of being left out, so I thought I could just sleep with someone and get it over with.”

I take another drink, heart racing and stomach churning. But I did it. I said it. It’s all out in the open.

Except the part about being fifteen, but then, there’s no reason he needs that on his conscience for the rest of his life. He didn’t know, so it’s not his fault anyway, and nothing happened. We just kissed.

“I know it sounds stupid,” I add when he doesn’t speak.

“That does sound stupid,” he says, taking the bottle away from me before I can take another drink. “ Really stupid.”

So not helping . I pick at a hangnail, wishing I had the whiskey bottle so I’d have something to do with my hands. I wish I’d never told him. I wish he’d go away and let me be humiliated by myself.

“I’m glad you ended up with me then, and not my brother,” he says after a while. “He wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

“Damn.”

I curse my bad luck for ending up with the gentleman the one night when I really wanted the scoundrel. Another word I would never use to describe an American, but the accent is doing weird things to my brain.

Oliver shakes his head. “I can’t believe you would do that. You’re throwing away the purest part of yourself to someone you don’t even know, just so you can be like your friends? You can never take that back. Don’t you want to give that to the man you’re going to be with every time for the rest of your life?”

Okay then. I’m not with the gentleman. I’m with The Abstinence Guy. I thought he was a myth from sex-ed class. Getting a lecture on purity was the furthest thing from my plan for New Year’s Eve, but apparently I’m a virgin slut with no morals who needs a reminder that my body is a temple. I can feel it coming on already.

“Why does it matter?” I ask.

“It matters,” Oliver says, so forcefully that I look at him against my better judgment. He’ staring at me, his luminous eyes full of…sadness.

“Why do you care?” I ask.

“Look,” he says. “I like nice things. Quality over quantity, yeah? I want the very best. And that applies to the woman I’ll marry as well. I don’t want someone who’s been used by another guy and tossed away.”

I just stare at him, trying not to let my mouth hang open too far. Oh, but he’s not done yet.

“If she’s not good enough for someone else, why would she be good enough for me? If a woman gives herself away to every man she dates, what does she have left to give the man she marries?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I ask.

“What?”

“Yeah, pretty sure there’s something about a lock that any key can open? Oh, and don’t forget chewed gum. And used tires. Or is a used car where you have to replace the tires? It’s hard to keep up with all analogies that compare women to objects.”

“I didn’t compare you to any objects,” he says, frowning at me.

“Well, who said anything about marriage?” I ask, since I’m pretty sure I should be offended, but I’m too drunk to remember which part of his attitude was most offensive. “I just met you. I don’t even know your last name. I was just trying to lose my stupid v-card.”

He sighs. “I’m sorry. But there are other guys out there who value the same things, and you’re cutting yourself off from them.”

“A real tragedy,” I mutter, rolling my eyes. “You seem like such a prize.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have used myself as the example,” he says, smiling so his dimple sinks in and almost makes me forget what a raging douchebag he is. “But the point still stands. The right man for you might want you to have saved yourself for him, and if you don’t, then you’d miss out on that. And I know you can walk away from here and sleep with the next guy you meet, but for what it’s worth, I hope you won’t.”

“I won’t,” I mutter, glowering at him.

I know it’s true, though. I can’t believe how reckless I’ve been. Not just with myself, but with everything. Sleeping with a stranger is not going to change what Todd did. And it’s not going to make me anyone other than who I am. For all I knew about Oliver, he could have been some murdering rapist, and here I am hanging out with him while my little sister sleeps innocently beside the bed, trusting me to protect her.

“Good,” he says. “Because from what I know of you, you’re an amazing girl, yeah? I’d hate to see you throw yourself away over some silly need to gossip with your girlfriends.”

That’s exactly what I was going to do, and it pisses me off that he called me on it, that I’m so transparent and shallow. I grit my teeth and fight the urge to tell him he can take his judgmental ass home if I’m such a disappointment.

“Now give me your phone,” he says, the entitled bastard picking it up without waiting for me to answer. He thumbs it on and opens the OnlyWords app. “I’m going to put in my contact. So the next time you get a silly idea to let yourself be used by a total stranger, you can text me and I’ll save you again.”

I can’t even speak without sputtering with indignation.

Save me? Who the actual fuck does this guy think he is, and where did he come up with the groundbreaking levels of audacity? I never asked for a knight in chastity belted armor. In fact, I’m pretty sure I asked for the exact opposite.

He cracks a grin when he sees the look on my face. “Or just text me again if you want a repeat. You’re a great kisser.”

He looks a little roguish then, almost like his brother with that twinkle in his eye. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or the fact that I don’t know what else to do, but I burst out laughing before I know it’s coming.

“Fancy doing something else then?” he asks, then drops me a wink. “Or were you only after one thing?”

“Rude,” I protest, my face flushing. I throw a pillow at him, and he ducks, and it tumbles off the far side of the bed. We both freeze, stifling laughter. I hear my sister stirring, and I grab Oliver’s hand and drag him off the bed, shoving him at the balcony door. He slides it open and slips out as I go around the bed to take the pillow off Lily and tuck her back in. She sighs and snuggles her stuffed unicorn, and I make sure she’s sleeping again before I step out to retrieve Oliver.

The rain has slowed to scattered, fat drops spitting down every few seconds. I hunch against the damp chill, opening my mouth to apologize for sending him to the balcony when it’s so nasty out. Before I can, he snags my hand and pulls me against him, sliding a hand around my lower back and smiling down at me. His gorgeous, long lashes sweep down to his cheeks, shuttering his pale eyes from view, and then his lips are on mine again.

I’m going to push him away. After a minute, I will. He doesn’t deserve more of me than I’ve already given. But I let him kiss me one more time first. One more time because damn does he know how to kiss, and the little ball of metal in his tongue is tickling mine, and his arms are hot around me on the cold night, and his sigh against my mouth makes my knees buckle. I’m going to push him away, but I told myself one more kiss, and it doesn’t end until one of us pulls away.

I hear the rain coming, and I huddle into his chest, ready for him to pull away. Instead, he turns us, pushing me up against the wall under the tiny ledge of shelter from the roof. His other hand reaches out, his long arm finding the glass door and pulling it closed without opening his eyes, without breaking our kiss. Then his arms are around me, and the rain hits, pelting down on his shoulders so hard a mist of droplets splatter onto me. I let out a little shriek into his mouth, and he chuckles into our kiss, swaying his hips against mine, so the length of our bodies is pressed together.

He shelters me with his body, with the scant edge of the roof, and buries his fingers in my hair, bringing my face up so I’ll stop huddling from the cold. I relent, letting him carry me away, sweep me back out to sea. What does it matter if I get lost in his kiss again? It’s just a kiss.

So we kiss.

We kiss until the strands of his soft black hair grow heavy and cold between my fingers, tangling like wet seaweed trapping me on the ocean floor. We kiss until I can feel his body quaking with shivers, and I know I am too, but they’re hot and cold shivers at the same time, and I can’t make sense of them. We kiss until he lifts me off my feet, and my legs circle his hips, and he pushes me up against the wall harder, his hot mouth growing more frantic, more urgent, more hungry. I can feel it too, this achy, needy hunger that’s consuming me too, gnawing and gnashing and clawing like a caged animal with her next meal dangling just out of reach.

It’s not me, because it can’t be me. Nice girls from the suburbs in Connecticut don’t have snarling beasts in their chests, at their cores. It’s not even a little part of me. It’s something he did to me, something he put in me with his bruising grip on my thigh and the clench of his fingers in my hair, making my scalp burn. And when I finally feel that animal thing tear from its bonds and break loose I want to warn him, but I don’t have time. It rushes over me, from my center outwards, like a star exploding, and I can feel the volley of popping, sizzling electricity shoot along my limbs, curling my toes and racing along the soles of my feet, prickling in my scalp like the crackling cascade of sparks raining down after the streaks of golden-white light of a firework.

For a minute I’m spinning and I don’t know up from down, and Oliver is still kissing me, and somehow he doesn’t know. How can he not know?

I push him back at last, shoving at his chest, trying to catch my breath. It’s too much, and he’s too close, and I want to run away and hide. He would be disgusted and horrified if he knew.

He eases back, releasing my thigh and letting me back to my feet. “Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. I can see a faint streak of red on his skin before the rain streams over it, taking it away. Did I bite him?

“You alright?” he asks.

I nod, relieved that he looks as disconcerted as I feel. “I’m cold,” I say, wrapping my arms around my chest. “We should go in.”

His gaze slips to follow the movement, and then he looks away. “Give me a minute.”

I nod and turn away, swallowing hard as I slide the door open, grateful for an escape. My eyes instantly go to the door, sure my mother will be standing there, her arms crossed and lips white with anger. I shake the thought away and grab some dry pajamas. We would have heard them pull up.

I quickly change in the bathroom and come back to find Oliver hovering inside the door to the balcony. “I’ll walk home,” he says. “They might be gone all night.”

“I can give you some dry clothes if you want to wait,” I say, gesturing toward the other rooms, where I’m sure my uncles have plenty of dry clothes. “At least wait until the rain dies down. You can warm up before you leave.”

“Not a problem,” he mutters, avoiding my gaze.

I realize I sound like my mother, fussing over him getting cold, when he obviously doesn’t care. He stood out in the rain with me for close to an hour.

“I’ll get you a towel,” I say, escaping to the bathroom. The temporary cease in awkwardness seems to be over, and we’re back to barely being able to speak to each other. I bring him a couple towels, then slide under the blankets, shivering too much to play it cool.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was just freezing.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have come. It was a bad idea from the start.”

“If it makes you feel any better, if you hadn’t come, I would’ve sat here reading an assignment for school like a loser while Meghan ran off with your brother.”

“That sounds nice, actually.”

I snort. “Reading on New Year’s Eve?”

He shrugs. “I like to read.”

“Yeah, me too, but not the musty old books they make us read for school.”

“What’s the book?”

I pick it up from the bedside table and turn the cover toward him. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”

“Fitting topic,” he says with a rueful smile, slipping off his shoes and coming to the bed.

“You’ve read it?”

“Once or twice.” He lays down one of the towels on top of the blanket and sits down on it. “Want to read it to me?”

“Um, no,” I say, giving him a look that hopefully conveys how insane he is for asking. “Reading aloud in class is my nightmare.”

“Oh come on, it can’t be all that bad.”

“It is,” I say. “Especially crap like this. It’s like a different language, and I’m so busy trying to not mess up that I don’t absorb a single word of what I’m saying.”

“Let me see,” he says, holding out a hand. “I’ll give it a go.”

“You’re going to read to me?” I ask in disbelief.

“Why not? It’s raining, like you said.”

“You’re insane.”

“So I’ve been told.”

He takes the book and I lie down, feeling ten kinds of awkward. But pretty soon, I’m distracted by his accent, which is so sexy I don’t even care what words he’s saying. I could listen to him talk all night. After a while, the lull of his warm, low voice soothes me into a trance. I’m too busy focusing on that to get caught in my usual anxiety spiral, tossing and turning as I worry at the edges of every memory of the day and the one before, every word I spoke that might have been misconstrued, every action I took that might come back to haunt me.

A distant roll of thunder rumbles across the sky, and I huddle down under the blanket, listening to the rain on the roof and my sister’s breathing and Oliver’s voice until the comfort of all of it pulls me under.