Chelsey
“You—you did what?” I wrap my arms around my stomach, the fleece inside his jacket brushing my skin softy. “Why would you do that?”
“Because protecting you is the only thing I had on my mind yesterday. But you just jumped to your stupid fuckin’ conclusions and lumped me in with your stereotype and refused to listen to me.”
My stomach flips, but I ignore it.
“Then you turn up at my house roaring drunk, demand to know why I won’t sleep with you, ask me if I’d get drunk so we could bone, then right before you fell asleep, told me I’d be fucking perfect if I were anyone else.” His eyes flare with so much emotion it hurts me everywhere.
Oh no.
“And you pretty much summed everything up in that single sentence, Chels. It ain’t gonna happen because you’re too wrapped up in your father’s past to let go and trust me. So that’s it. I’m done. I tried. Fuck, I tried so hard!” He rubs his hand across his forehead and turns away from me again.
“It’s so easy to stand there and say that, isn’t it? That I’m wrapped up in his past. Do you get what he actually did to me?” I’m yelling, and I don’t know how that happened, but I know I can’t stop. Everything I’ve bottled up for so long is on the verge of exploding out of me. “He tore my fucking family apart, Kye. He broke my mom’s heart, he broke mine, and he never gave us a second thought. He forced me into his world when Mom died, and I had to endure all that disgusting bullshit that ruined my life. I know what life is like on the road. I know it’s not easy, and I know the temptation in every town.”
“Jesus!” Kye runs his fingers through his hair as the rain gets heavier. “It’s not like that for us.”
“It isn’t until it is!” I take a step backward. “I don’t want that. Any of that. I want my boring bar job in my boring hometown, and at the end of the day I want to go home to my boring apartment and watch boring TV shows. I don’t want to spend forever wondering whether or not the person I’m following around the country, and maybe the world, is even faithful to me.”
“I’m not your father!” His words are hoarse, and he turns as he shouts them. The look in his eyes is so angry, so raw, almost predatory. “I am not your father, Chelsey. I would never do that shit to you. To anyone. But especially not to you. Fuck!”
I shiver as the rain beats down harder. It’s icy cold, and as warm as the jacket is, it isn’t waterproof. Kye closes the space between us in a few long strides. His white T-shirt is wet and clinging to him, and I swallow as his abs flex with each powerful step he takes toward me. It distracts me just long enough so that he can pull me against him. My hands flatten against his stomach and, thanks to his totally wet T-shirt, I can now feel how solid his stomach is. How perfectly defined his abs are.
But of course, I know this. It just feels different right now.
Despite the coldness of the rain, his body is hot, and I’m surprised there isn’t steam emanating from his skin every time water hits him. Instantly, I feel myself warming, and he tightens his arm around my waist and dips his head.
“I’m not him, Chelsey. I never will be him. The idea of hurting you is the fucking reason I spent my day yesterday trying to undo every bit of hurt I caused just by being around you.”
“Yeah. Well. You’re stupid,” I mumble into his chest. Nice one, Chelsey.
He laughs. It’s as low as his voice. It’s deep and rumbling and every sound that leaves his lips dances across my skin the way the rain is dancing off his.
“Give up,” I whisper, trying to put some distance between us.
“Nice try.” He reaches to my face and forces me to look at him by tilting my chin up. I squeeze my eyes shut as the rain pelts against my forehead. He laughs again and slides his hand into my hair. “If you really, really meant that, you wouldn’t have turned up at my house last night.”
“No, I do.” I open my eyes again. I want him to believe me, desperately, because right now I don’t even think I believe myself. “I’ll never accept your lifestyle. I’ll never be able to trust you completely, no matter how hard you try to prove it, because guess what? Scars run deep. And mine are so fucking deep they’re part of my bones. That’s just how it is. You’ll never change that.”
“I don’t want to change it,” he says roughly. “I don’t even want to erase those scars. I don’t even want to be a fucking Band-Aid. I just want you to give me one chance to prove I’m not him.”
“You’re leaving in like two weeks.”
“So?”
“So this is so stupid!” I look into his eyes and hope I can show him the strength I don’t feel when he’s right against me this way, when his warmth beats out the icy rain and his touch is stronger than I feel, when my heart is pounding this erratically. “I’m the girl that’ll never stop running, Kye. Stop chasing me.”
“Never.”
I push hard against him in protest. He lets me take a step back before he brings me right back into him. His hand curves right around the back of my head, pulling my face to his, and before I can gasp at the onslaught of ice-cold drops attacking my head, Kye Burke touches his lips to mine.
It’s hard and strong. The kiss is head-spinning and heart-pounding, and as my blood pumps hotly around my body in a way that has every inch of me on fire, I know exactly why we can never be.
It’s because of this.
It’s because his kiss says a thousand things and promises each and every one of them with a ferocity words could only dream of. It’s because his kiss is so fucking consuming.
I fist his shirt. The wet material balls into nothing in my hands, making me grip tighter and move closer to him. Like that’s possible.
Fuck, I want to rip my clothes off right here in the middle of the park just to get closer to him.
The fleeting thought makes me gasp, and, this time, when I push away from him, he lets me go. I swallow harshly as I focus on him in front of me. His hair is flat against the top of his head, water is beading on his ridiculously long eyelashes, and his lips are parted. His muscular chest heaves, the fabric of his shirt so stuck to it that it bunches at his stomach, revealing a tan strip of skin just above the waistband of his jeans.
The tattoos decorating his arms have raindrops racing over them, and it’s only when my gaze drops to his hands, half-balled into fists, his fingers twitching, that I realize I’m just as wet as he is.
My hair is stuck to the sides of my face. My nose is freezing and probably pink from its exposure to the chill, and raindrops are slipping down my neck and chest beneath the jacket. I can barely breathe, and I gulp as my need for air overwhelms me.
No, no, no.
Why can’t he ever just let me go?
He opens his mouth to speak, but an urge overcomes me and I take two steps forward into him. My arms snake around his neck, and his lips find mine again. The kiss is urgent and desperate, and I stand on my tiptoes to take more of this and taste more of him.
He’s my poison, but I kiss him like he’s my oxygen.
We break apart with a gasp, and the rain turns to ice. It’s a mixture of hail and sleet, but the hail is bigger than I’ve seen it for a while, and I bring my shoulders right up to my ears.
“Please get in the fucking truck,” Kye mutters. “My back is getting beat to hell right now.”
I nod, and just when I think we’re going to run, he grabs my waist. In one strong swoop, to the tune of my scream, he lifts me up and throws me over his shoulder the way he did outside the phone store.
“Oh my God! Kye!”
Hail and ice and rain beat down on my back as he runs through the park and back toward his truck. I hold on to him the best I can, and I have to say that I have a pretty view of his butt from up here. That distracts from the weather slightly.
He unlocks the truck without putting me down. And opens the door. And throws me in.
“Neanderthal,” I gasp. He ignores me and shuts the door. He gets in the other side with a smirk and starts the engine. I push my wet hair out of my face and sit back in the seat, sliding the belt over me and buckling in.
Kye turns the heat up, and I open the weather app on my phone. The connection is slow, but it finally says the weather’s only going to get worse, including a sharp temperature drop. I sigh and turn to him as he pulls up outside my apartment building.
I have no idea why I say it, because I know it’s futile, but the words fall from my lips anyway. “You should probably go now if you want to make it home before the weather gets worse.”
His eyes, so intensely blue I shiver, bore into mine. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
“Oh.” I squeak it out and get out of the truck. He follows me into the building and up the stairs in silence, still not saying a word as I push open my apartment door. My first stop is the dryer. I pull out the towels and underwear I put in yesterday morning and dump them on the table. “Um,” I mutter, peeking over my shoulder at Kye. “You might have to wear a towel for an hour, until you’re all dry.”
“I’ve got a better idea.” He crosses his arms as he grabs the bottom of his shirt, and I swear to God it happens in slow motion, but every single muscle on his body flexes as he lifts it up and over his head. He stalks toward me and whips the wet T-shirt into the dryer. His fingers grasp the zipper on the jacket I’m wearing, and with his eyes hard on mine, he yanks it down and shoves the jacket off my shoulders.
My breathing is ragged as what he wants to do sinks in, and my traitorous bitch of a body is ignoring every signal my brain is sending to run. And run now. My body definitively does not want to run.
He snakes his arms around me and grabs the bottom of my shirt at my back, then he tugs me forward. My hands press against his naked chest, and his muscles twitch under my touch. Fuck, shit, fuck.
We’ve never had sober sex.
He silences that thought with the simple press of his lips on mine. The feeling he evokes is anything but simple, though. It’s a raging inferno of desire and lust that consumes me, like he just flicked a switch and here I am, dropping my hands to unbutton his pants and push them down his legs.
He undresses me in the same quick fashion, right down to my panties, and breaks the kiss for only a moment to kick the dryer door shut. I laugh as he pushes the button and it whirs to life.
“Problem solved,” he murmurs into my mouth, grinning to himself.
He drops his lips to my neck and picks me up at the same time. He carries me to my bedroom, and we fall together to my bed, and he leans over me, his inked skin bright bursts of color against my untouched, pale body.
He wastes no time exploring me. With his hands and his mouth, he touches what seems like all of me. My back arches and my hands bury in his hair, and then the next thing I know, my panties are on the floor and he’s pushing inside me easily.
It’s just so . . . perfect.
Our heavy breathing mingles between kisses as my hands trail across his back. He drives into me and I crave getting closer to him, like he needs to be deeper than he is, like that’s possible. Each touch of his lips and thrust of his hips wipes out every inch of doubt in my mind, at least for now.
Our bodies work together in perfect sync.
It seems like forever, yet no time at all, when I cry his name and he collapses on top of me.
Kye rolls to the side and tucks me into him. This is the way we slept last night, when I said those so true yet so cruel words to him. He didn’t need to tell me that. I knew I’d said it. I just wasn’t sure he’d heard it in my half-asleep state. I don’t even know if he replied.
But that seems so futile right now. When I’m wrapped in his embrace and inside the four walls of my apartment, he’s just Kye. When we’re here, there are no frills, no songs or dances or bright lights.
Here, when I’m in his arms and he’s in mine, he’s just Kye.
And this is my favorite.
I peer over his shoulder and out my bedroom window. It’s almost pure ice falling from the sky now, and even if they wanted to sand the roads to keep them open, they’d never do it enough to make them drivable. The wind has picked up, too.
“It looks like you could be stuck here,” I whisper hesitantly, my voice catching halfway through. “At least until tomorrow.”
He pulls back to look at me without letting me go. “I can think of worse things. Besides, we can decorate your tree.”
“That’s more fun drunk. And I think you know what happened to the Jack Daniel’s.”
His grin sets flutters alight in my tummy. “Yep. I remember.”
My cheeks flush. Yep. Never gonna live that one down, am I? “I think there might be wine in the fridge. . . . I usually keep it for Sofie and Ella because they don’t do hard liquor unless it’s in cocktails.”
“God. You and Jessie are so fucking hard-core.”
“We are. Didn’t you know?”
He laughs and rolls over so he’s on top of me once more. He flattens his forearms on the pillow on either side of my head, and my eyes flick to his tattoos.
From the owl on one to the timepiece on the other and all the other intricate designs that thread each image together, his arms are pure works of art. I trail my thumb gently along the outside of the owl that curves around his bicep, feeling the heat of his skin.
“Are you always this hot?”
His answer is a grin.
“I mean temperature.” I blush again. “Not that you aren’t hot. I just mean . . . Aw, fuck.”
He laughs and bends down, nudging his way back between my legs. He’s not hard, exactly, but there’s definitely potential resting against my stomach. “I love it when you get all tongue-tied and twist yourself in knots.”
“Glad someone does,” I mutter grumpily.
He teases the hair on top of my head and makes me look at him. “Don’t be grumpy. You’re in bed with a really hot guy. How can you be grumpy?”
“Because he’s also arrogant.”
“Confident.”
I reach down and tickle his side. He jerks away, and I feel the evil smile as it creeps across my face.
Kye Burke is ticklish.
I tickle both of his sides and he drops down beside me on the bed with a bounce. He grabs me and pulls me on top of him. I scream as he returns the favor and the skin-crawling sensation overtakes me. I wrangle my way out of his hold and fall to the floor, and I manage to scramble up just in time for him to miss grabbing me.
My arm keeps my boobs supported as I run through my apartment, laughing. Kye isn’t as conservative as I am and comes running out after me, baring all. His eyes flash with playfulness—a dirty, sexy playfulness.
“Chelsey.”
“Kye,” I smile sweetly.
“I’m not done with you. Get back in there.”
“You’ll have to catch me.”
No sooner have the words left my mouth than he’s darted toward me. I scream again, this time with laughter, and run around the kitchen island. He’s quicker than me and grabs me by the waist, pulling my back against him.
“That wasn’t hard,” he chuckles into my ear, dragging me back into my room.
“What are you doin’?” I manage to ask through my laughter. “You’re insane.”
“And you’re mine,” he breathes, all traces of amusement suddenly gone.
I swallow at the promise in his voice. And this time, when he drops me into the bed and leans over me, everything is slow and easy.
Fairy lights have been strung out across my living room floor for the last thirty minutes. There’s a huge-ass knot in the middle of the wire. They were the only Christmas decoration that made it from my last shitty apartment. And despite all the great sex earlier, we’ve been arguing over the best way to undo the knot for a shockingly long time.
I gave up after five minutes, poured a glass of wine, and sat my ass down at my kitchen island.
Kye, meanwhile, is still sitting cross-legged on the living room floor in nothing but his boxers. His jeans were still damp, and he refused to put his T-shirt on, so I have a fantabulous view of his fine self in boxers, trying to undo a tangle of Christmas lights.
It doesn’t sound that hot, but trust me, it is: the guy has the body of a Greek god and the kind of ink that should be put into an adult coloring book. I mean, I kind of want to take a Sharpie to his arms and just doodle in the parts that aren’t colored. There aren’t many, but my neon Sharpies could really make a great addition.
“You need to find a cookie or something,” Kye says without looking up from the lights. He pulls one end through a loop he’s widened. “You’re drooling.”
“In your dreams.” I take a sip of my wine. “Aren’t you done with those lights yet? Christmas won’t wait for you, you know.”
I can’t see it, but I’m pretty sure he rolls his eyes. “Babe, I’m a man. I can fix anything, whether it’s a broken electronic, a chipped shelf, or a knotted string of lights. I just need a little time.”
“Jessie waited two days for Aidan to take out the trash before she did it herself.”
“And your point is?”
“I want my lights on my tree tonight, not in two days. Because I might kill you if you’re still here then.”
He turns his head toward me slowly with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Nah, you won’t kill me. I’ll just get naked every time you feel the urge.”
And I can imagine what he plans to do after he gets naked.
I shake my head and take another sip as he works the lights. I think he’s getting somewhere, but then again, he is a guy. He could probably make it look like he’s untying them while making the knot even worse.
I rest my chin on my hand and watch him. It’s getting a little warm in here, since I had to turn the heat up so he wouldn’t freeze to death in his underwear, but he hasn’t noticed. I think the last time I saw so much concentration for so long was when my grandma accidentally bought a hamster ball instead of a treat ball for her cat, and Señor the tabby spent an hour trying to get into the thing.
“I’m hungry,” Kye announces, setting the lights back down. “Do you have any food?”
I move to stand, then realize, shit. “I forgot to go to the store before the storm started.” I clap my hand over my mouth.
Which means I’m down to ice cream, milk, tortilla chips, and possibly a couple of slices of bread if I’m lucky. Oh, and noodles.
“I can make ramen noodles?” It’s a lame offer, but hey.
“Which will give me enough energy to make it to the bathroom for a piss before I’m starving again,” he drawls, getting up. My eyes fall to his backside as he walks across the front room toward the window, and, boy oh boy, that is one fine piece of ass.
“It’s light enough to drive right now,” he says, turning around. “Were you just starin’ at my ass?”
I snap my gaze up. “No.”
His smirk speaks volumes. “Yeah, whatever. You can probably still drive out there, but I doubt your car will make it. The street is already icing over.”
I grimace. “Your truck?”
“My clothes are still wet.”
A sound that’s a cross between a Chihuahua barking and nails on a chalkboard whines out of me. Dammit, he’s right.
“If you don’t go now, you’re fucked. You can take my truck and be back before it hits hard.”
I look up at the ceiling through my lashes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. “But I don’t wanna go out.”
“Then the only thing I have to eat is you,” he says matter-of-factly, a dark glint in his eyes.
I get up and disappear into my bedroom, grabbing a pair of yoga pants from the hamper as I do. If I’m going out, I’m going out comfortably.
I emerge from my room a few minutes later dressed in my winter uniform—UGGs, yoga pants, and a thick hooded sweatshirt—and stand in front of him. “Any special requests, Mr. Ramen Noodles Don’t Give Me Enough Energy to Take a Shit?”
He grins slowly, his eyes reflecting the laugher I know he’s dying to let loose. “Yeah. I need sweatpants, underwear, and a couple of T-shirts. Oh, and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and some more candles in case the power goes out again.”
I bite my tongue as I take his card. “Yes to the clothing, no to the latter.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m one-hundred-percent positive.”
“All right. Then, no.”
I tuck my scarf over my chin and grab my purse—and his keys. Kye’s card slots safely into my wallet, and I hold my purse close as I go down the stairs and step out into the now-simmering storm. It’s still hitting hard, but it’s not as bad as it was a few hours ago. Kye is right, though. I can see small ice patches on the hill leading away from my apartment building, and since that’s the only road in or out, I do have to leave now or miss my window.
I get into his truck with some hesitation. He’s parked next to me, and I glance out the window longingly at my car. She’d never make it back up the hill, and I don’t have any desire to walk up if she dies halfway through the attempt.
Kye’s truck it is.
It feels like a damn monster compared to my car, but after some seat and mirror adjustments, I get comfortable. My seat is about six inches closer to the wheel than he has his, but hey, he’s about six inches taller than me anyway.
A white SUV pulls out of the parking lot immediately after me. My stomach tightens, because I never see anyone else in the lot, and the truck was parked up right by the door.
I don’t have to be famous to know what this means.
I do my best to ignore the white Range Rover following me, but it’s hard. Especially in this weather. I just about make it to the store in one piece and run in before the other car has even pulled up. While I hope the asshole journalist in that car won’t even take my picture, I’d prefer that over them attempting to ask me a question when I just want to get the stuff and get back home.
I breeze through the store, guessing at a large for Kye’s clothes, and make sure I have enough food and other things to get through the next two days at least. I even grab the Jack and candles he mentioned, because hey, why not.
We’ve fucked three times. I highly doubt a fourth is gonna change much at this point. Plus, it isn’t exactly a hardship.
I split the items at the cashier, wincing with guilt as I put the expensive items on the side for Kye’s card. I’ll tell him later, but if this storm is going to hit badly, I’ll be down two, maybe three shifts at work. If not, and I can get out, then I’ll just pay him back. Besides I’m pretty sure he won’t care.
“Someone’s taking a photo of you,” the girl behind the register says. “Just over there, by the laundry-product aisle.”
I resist the urge to turn. “Oh well.”
“Are you, like, famous?”
More than I want to be. “Not that I know of.” I smile tightly and put the last of my bags back into my cart.
“Hey—you’re Chelsey Young, aren’t you? The girl that Kye Burke was just spotted with?”
I shake my head with a wide-eyed, dumb look. “Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. I have no idea who she is.”
“Oh. Shame. I’d commit murder to know how he kisses. Never mind.”
I smile again, and with a wave of my fingers, turn toward the door. The sensation of being followed creeps over my skin, and the desire to look over my shoulder strengthens. I fight it. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they’re bugging me. I’ve played this game before, and I’m fed up with doing it by their rules.
I load my bags into the flatbed and return the cart. The woman who was taking the photos isn’t even trying to hide herself now, and a yell of “Excuse me!” stops me before I get into the truck.
“Are you Chelsey Young?” she shouts.
I barely glance over my shoulder at her. “Sorry. Wrong person.”
“But you came out of her apartment building.”
“Maybe she’s my doppelganger. I’ll look her up.” I shut the truck door behind me before she can say another word and put the truck into reverse. She says something else as I turn toward the exit but I can’t hear her. Probably because I just turned up the radio, the weather reporter booming that all non-emergency vehicles should get off the road as quickly as possible.
She doesn’t follow me home, at least as far as I can tell. I’m glad. I don’t want to have to deal with that crap any more than strictly necessary. She wouldn’t have believed the crap about me not being, well, me, but I guess she was hoping for an exclusive kiss and tell, and I threw her off by not being open to the prospect.
Kiss and tell. Tacky.
Back outside my apartment building, the storm has worsened so much that I can barely see the other side of the parking lot, and I manage to hook all the bags over my arms so I don’t have to make a second trip. I bite hard enough on Kye’s key fob that it locks his truck. Now that’s a skill.
I let myself into the building then grab the bags and go upstairs. I kick at the bottom of my front door and call a muffled, “Lemme in!”
The door opens, and I stumble through, dumping the bags on the ground.
“Got enough?” Kye asks, staring at all the plastic bags containing a little of everything. “Did that reporter bother you?”
“How did you know it was a reporter?”
He shrugs. “I watched to make sure you got the truck out of the lot okay. No one got in the white SUV before it pulled out after you, so it had to be a reporter.”
“Oh. No, not really. I told her Chelsey is my doppelganger.” I unwind my scarf and hang it on the hook behind the door while he rifles through the bags and pulls out a pair of sweatpants.
Thankfully, they fit.
He helps me put all the bags on the island, and glances at me with a cocky smirk that bleeds sex appeal when he extracts the bottle of Jack. I shrug a shoulder and take it, my fingertips brushing his as I do. The glass bottle clunks as it hits my countertop.
I turn from where I’m looking at the ice forming on the kitchen window, a thought flitting through my mind. I’m momentarily distracted by the fact the lights are untangled and on the tree, flickering brightly. But then Kye returning to my line of sight and pulling more stuff from bags brings the thought back to the forefront of my mind.
“Hey,” I say, putting a hand on my hip, the other still holding the liquor bottle. “If the storm was still light enough for me to drive your truck to the store, why couldn’t you just put on your barely damp clothes and drive home?”
His grin is wide and smug as he pulls a doughnut out of the packet. The twinkle in his eyes makes me want to slap him as butterflies rise in my stomach, but it’s the way he takes a bite out of the sugary treat and winks that really pisses me off.
Son of a bitch.