Everything To Me - Box Set (Books 1-3): Everything To Me, #7

1

Peter

I always thought if I blew up my life, it would be because of her.

Dana. My sister’s husband’s niece.

She’s perfect, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, my biggest weakness, my greatest regret, at one time my best friend, my strongest temptation, the subject of every sexual fantasy I’ve ever had.

Still, I’ve been handling even that, despite the temptation she poses just by existing, by breathing, by smiling and saying my name. But it wasn’t her who tripped me up.

Shit, I’m not trying to be funny, but the people who started me down the path to chaos were a girl I barely know and an arrogant little rich boy named Tripp.

Walking into that party, I just wanted to hang out with my best friend, Kev, on his birthday.

I’m not big into the party scene. I can’t afford to be. Too many risks involved in getting shit-faced. It’s way too unpredictable. I spent too many years living with drunks not to know that, or for alcohol to have any real appeal to me.

Besides, my life is all about control.

Self-control, because I finally figured out that the only person I can control is me. Not my screwed-up parents. Not the parole board who let my mom out of jail again. Not the people who give me shit. I can’t control what people think of me, or whether I get to keep the life I have now — not completely.

I didn’t understand that when I was a kid, when I was living with my parents and caught up in all their craziness. It tried to suck me in, chew me up and spit me back out as a stupid kid as mad and reckless as they were.

I learned the hard way, but I got here, finally. I know my life is about me and what I make it.

Especially three weeks from now.

I turn eighteen, and that’s a very big deal for me.

Not in the way most kids think, the ones with easy lives and parents who’ve always given them whatever they want. The kids who have these bullshit fantasies about being an adult, which to them means they can do what they want and answer to nobody, but Mom and Dad will still provide the house, the car, the food, all that stuff.

Turning eighteen is real for me. My parents will no longer have any legal authority over me. That’s huge for somebody with parents as fucked up as mine. No court will ever be able to make me go back to them.

I’ve been waiting for this day forever. At times, I thought I’d never make it this far. Some days, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to.

Not that Mom and Dad have been around much for the past four years. They’ve been in prison, Dad not as long as Mom, and even when he got out, he didn’t come back here. Mom … well, she did the last time she got out. A parole violation sent her back for a while, but she’s already out again. I haven’t seen her, but I know I will.

For three more weeks, I have a legal guardian, my sister, Julie. She’s okay. More than okay. She ran away at eighteen, and I didn’t think she’d ever come back — especially to this town she hated, where people saw her as the poor little girl with the fucked-up parents. But when Mom and Dad got arrested for embezzling, Julie came back to keep me out of foster care. I’ll always be grateful to her for that, and for bringing Dana into my life.

Julie married Dana’s Uncle Zach a year after she came back, and they’ve been good to me, better than I deserved. But nobody wants to start a marriage with a screwed-up fourteen-year-old. Those two need their privacy. Trust me, I’ve walked in on them often enough to know. Hell, they’re entitled to have some time to themselves. I don’t want to be an obligation to anyone.

I don’t think Zach and Julie will throw me out the minute I turn eighteen, but I need to know I can take care of myself no matter what, so I’ve been working and saving some money. If Mom comes here and stirs up shit, I can leave. Once I’m eighteen, no one can stop me.

It’s a kind of freedom I can’t begin to describe, and it’s so close I can taste it now. I can’t wait.

As long as I can take care of myself – stay out of trouble and make enough money to support myself — I can make my own decisions, do what I want. The only thing that can bring me down is if I fuck up badly enough to wreck my own life, and I’m determined not to do that.

Tonight, I plan to let go a little and enjoy the party.

It’s Kev’s birthday and it’s a really nice night, clear skies, not too hot despite being late July, a huge, full moon hanging low in the sky. The guy throwing the party lives about four miles out of town with no close neighbors to complain about the noise, and his parents are away.

As I park my truck and climb out, music blares from the backyard. The heavy thrum of the base mixes with laughter and a buzz of conversation. I come around the right side of the house and notice, off in the shadows in the trees, two people making out.

No big surprise. Lots of people will be doing that.

But as I take two more steps, I think I hear whimpering.

Not the good kind a girl might make when she’s happy and really turned on.

The scared kind.

Maybe.

I’m not sure.

I glance back to the right and think, If the girl needs help, she’ll yell, right? I hear the whimper again. It’s dark in that part of the yard, so I’m still not sure, but I think the guy might have his hand over her mouth.

Which still could just be to keep her from making too much noise while they … have sex? Right there? Maybe. Drunk kids will do just about any damned thing.

I take a few steps closer, and they shift enough to move into a patch of light. He definitely has his hand over her mouth, and … yeah, she is trying to get away. She’s trying to knee him in the balls. She must be scared.

Hey! I yell as I rush toward them and finally see the guy.

Tripp Fucking Buchanan, and he looks pissed. Back off! he says. This is none of your business.

He’s on the football team with me, strong as hell, and she’s tiny. Andie, that’s her name. We had European History together one year. I think I remember hearing about her and Tripp hanging out with each other over the summer.

I keep walking toward them, thinking I’m going to knock the shit out of Tripp for this and enjoy it, because I know what it’s like to have someone bigger and stronger than I am grab me like that and refuse to let go. There’s no way I’m letting any guy do that to a girl.

But me coming toward them is enough to distract Tripp for a few seconds. Andie uses that to twist around and break his grip on her forearms. She comes running into my arms, trembling and sobbing, dark streaks of what’s probably mascara running down her cheeks.

I put my arms around her, to show Tripp I’m going to protect her. He glares at me like he’s going to start something, but in the end says, Fine. Take her. She’s more trouble than she’s worth, stupid little bitch.

Deciding it’s more important to take care of Andie right now, I let him go. I can find Tripp anytime I want.

She finally stops crying and mostly stops shaking. I ease back a step so I can see her better. Her shirt is pulled to the side, off one shoulder. I think she’s going to have bruises on her arms from his hands tomorrow, but I don’t see any other injuries.

Hey? I ask. You okay?

She nods a little, sniffles, then whispers, Thank you.

Did he … What did he do?

Nothing, really. I … made him mad. That’s all, and then—

—He tried to rape you?

No. It’s not … We’ve had sex. He likes it rough, you know? And when he gets drunk, or I make him mad—

He’s done this before, and you still go out with him? That makes no fucking sense, and it makes me mad, which must have come through in what I said to her and how I said it, because she eases back like she’s a little afraid of me now. Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t like him very much before I saw what he did to you, and now I like him even less.

He’s okay most of the time. And he can be really nice. Just … like I said … when he drinks …

Yeah, I know. God, did I know.

He really scared me tonight. My arm and my shoulder hurt, and my mouth. He smashed his mouth against mine. She touches trembling fingers to her bruised lips. I can see the puffiness in them.

He doesn’t get to hurt you, I say. Being drunk is no excuse.

I know. I do. She leans into me, hugs me quickly and as she’s pulling away, gives me a kiss on my cheek. She’s a sweet girl, too mousy and poor to be popular, but sweet, even if she does have lousy taste in guys. Thank you. I don’t know what he might have done if you hadn’t come along.

Did you come here with him, Andie? I ask. Do you want me to take you home?

She tells me she came with her cousin Mia, and we run into her at the edge of the crowd in the backyard.

Tripp’s there, surrounded by his friends, glaring at us. He yells across the space between us, Hey, plenty of other girls here, all happy to be with me.

Andie leans into my side, trembling again, and I put my arm around her and tell her, It’s okay. I won’t let him hurt you.

Mia offers to take Andie home, and I walk them to the car. In the light spilling out of the open car door, I see Andie, with her right hand, holding her left arm against her waist, like if she moves it too much, it’ll hurt even more, and her lip is puffy.

That little prick. I’m furious.

Andie, you can’t let him do this again. You can’t stay with him.

Her face looks like I hurt her just by saying that. I know, she whispers.

I get her in the car, and tell her if he bothers her again, to tell me, that I’ll take care of it. And I will. Before I turn to leave, she says, Peter? Could I … Please don’t tell anyone about this, okay?

That he hurt you? That he scared you? That he’s a mean drunk? I’m not sure what she’s asking.

She nods. I guess she means all of it, and she looks scared again. Is that what she’s not telling me? That she’s scared of what he’ll do if he finds out she told anyone what he did to her tonight?

Fucker.

To scare her like this? A girl he probably outweighs by seventy pounds? He’s right there in the backyard, so drunk he’s slurring his words. Who knows what he might do to some other girl. I want him to pay for what he already did. I want him to know what it feels like to get beaten up.

Unlike me, he has a classic football player’s body, all big, bulky muscles, and he’s probably got twenty pounds or so on me. But I bet I know a lot more about fighting than he does. I bet I can take him.

And I want to, even if it isn’t smart.

Dana

I drag Becca to the party with me, because I know he’ll be there. It’s one of the last big blasts of summer, but more importantly, his best friend’s birthday. Peter will show up.

Not that I don’t see him around. I do. Casual, everyday family things, where we pretend to be nothing but casual, everyday friends.

It makes me furious and more than a bit crazy that he treats me this way now.

Sometimes I think I imagined it all. Everything that happened between us. Or didn’t happen. The look in his eyes when he watched me. The way it felt when he touched me in the smallest of ways. The times when I felt like he wanted so much more for the two of us, like I did, except we were both too scared of messing up what we had to do anything about it.

He was my best friend. I know that. That was real, and I miss him so much.

But did I imagine that little blast of heat in his eyes when he used to look at me? Did I imagine that look meant he wanted me? That he once took any chance he got to touch me, even if it was in a thousand insignificant ways — that felt completely significant to me? Did I really feel that little hit of need between us, like hundreds of little threads pulling us toward each other? Did I completely misread that feeling that all he could think about was kissing me? Touching me? That at any moment he might grab me and haul me up against him and never let me go?

I grew up thinking I could figure out anything, could handle anything. I’ve always been smart. My whole life, people have said so. At school, I’m almost always the smartest kid in the room.

But I’m unbelievably bad at the whole boy-girl thing.

It’s like we’re in a movie, and everybody got a copy of the script except me. They know exactly where they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to say. I don’t know what my cues are, what my lines are. Everything I do seems awkward and wrong. I get more tense about it all the time, which makes it all worse.

I can’t believe I’m this bad at anything. Normally, I’ll study, I’ll read, I’ll make outlines and write note cards, I’ll research like you wouldn’t believe to figure things out.

Not this.

Not him.

I want to go up to him and beg him to tell me what happened five months ago, what I did wrong, what changed. For a while after, I did that. I couldn’t help myself. He could always see it coming. I’d try to bring it up, and he’d shut down completely, get that blank look on his face that I hate. He’d claim nothing happened, nothing’s wrong. Like I’m the one who’s crazy. Like I made it all up in my head, and he never felt anything special for me beyond friendship.

I want to scream at him, beg him, cry all over him until he tells me. I’m afraid I have begged. I know I’ve cried. I haven’t quite screamed, but I did corner him at least once, and his story never changed.

You didn’t do anything, he’d say. Nothing’s changed.

But I know everything has.

I hate it. I keep going over and over it in my mind. What did I do? I can’t figure it out. I can’t fix what I don’t understand. I can’t begin to apologize when I don’t know what’s wrong.

And I can’t imagine why he’d do this to me. He wanted me. I swear, he did. But he doesn’t anymore.

Okay, so what’s my deal here? asks my best friend, Becca. Am I supposed to keep you from talking to him? From standing in the corner staring at him? From making a fool of yourself over him?

Definitely the last one, I say. Other than that, I’m not sure.

Becca sighs. Okay. But will you try to have fun, at least?

I shoot her a look. She knows parties like this aren’t my thing — wasted high school students, music so loud it pounds inside my head, people in dark corners making out and disappearing to have sex. I’m too cautious for that. Maybe I’m too uptight for that. Is this really what we’re supposed to be doing? Drinking until we throw up or pass out and taking our clothes off for guys we barely know?

I’ve had a drink, a couple of times. It’s not that I have some moral or religious objection to it. I just have no desire to throw up or pass out and feel like crap the next day, and — okay, I have a thing about making plans, thinking, strategizing before I do anything. It’s a little anal, I know, but that’s the way I am.

And the whole sex thing? I want to be in love. At the very least, I’d have to really trust a guy to take my clothes off in front of him. When did that become an unreasonable position? I feel like people my age think it is, that I live like a nun and I’m the most boring sixteen-year-old on earth. A little of it might be that I’m younger than everybody in my class. I skipped third grade, and I won’t be seventeen until January. But mostly, I think, it’s just me.

I’m not a freak, am I? I ask Becca.

What? Who called you a freak?

No one. Not to my face, at least.

Who called you one behind your back?

I don’t know, but I feel like one sometimes.

You are not a freak, she says emphatically.

Thank you. I needed to hear that.

I know the statistics. For girls my age, it’s about a 50/50 split between the haves and the have-nots. But it sure doesn’t feel like half the girls around me are virgins. It feels like something is wrong with me. The whole hook-up culture freaks me out.

Hey, Becca says, if you had someone you were crazy about, the way I’m crazy about Brady, you’d be all over him.

Yes, I would, I agree.

She’s all gooey-eyed over Brady, can’t even say his name without it sounding like she’s been drugged, which is really funny. Becca is so not that girl. She never has been. I never thought she would be. She’s a little freaked out about it herself, but she can’t seem to fight it. It’s like she’s been enveloped by this love/lust fog, and nothing about the real world registers. It has been fun for me to watch. I think she’s starting to get why I can’t bring myself to give up on Peter.

If he came up to you right now, Becca says, and said he was sorry, that he’s been wrong about everything, and he can’t last another moment without having you naked, you’d start peeling off your clothes, wouldn’t you?

Yes, I would. I’m not proud of it, but if he ever says he wants me, there’s no way I’ll turn him down.

So, there you go. You’re not a freak. You’re just completely hung up on one guy.

Thank you. I feel better.

You're welcome. Can we walk into this party now? Becca asks.

Yes, I’m ready.

Good. So, what’s the plan?

I don’t know. I don’t have a plan.

Not that I didn’t try to come up with one. It’s just that there are no good plans for a situation like this. If there was, I’d have already done it. There’s the smart thing to do, which is to give up, and I can’t. I don’t know how I ever will.

My sad, really vague non-plan is that thing girls do—the hope to bump into him, accidentally on purpose thing.

A stupid girl-game.

I hate that. I don’t play games. But I miss him so much. Sometimes, I think just one thing will change, and from there, it’ll be like dominoes falling, changing everything until we’re back together.

Sometimes, I think maybe I’m not sexy enough. I have tiny breasts and hardly any curves to my ass. I’m a stick-girl, and not because I starve myself. It’s just the way I am. Okay, it’s gotten a little bit better in the last six months, but still …

Maybe he wants really sexy curves.

Are guys really that shallow?

Probably.

Even him?

I don’t know. He just doesn’t seem to want me.

Maybe he wants a girl who’ll have sex with him, and he thinks I won’t, that I’m too uptight, too much of a good girl.

So ... I could walk up to him and say, I would do you in a heartbeat.

Right. Like that’s gonna happen.

I’m wallowing in my indecision about what to do when we come around the side of the house and a girl comes running past us, yelling about a fight in the backyard.

Oh, great, I tell Becca. Do we even want to go back there?

It’s up to you, she says.

Another girl rushes up to us and says a friend texted her that Tripp and Peter are fighting.

No, I say. Peter doesn’t fight anymore. He hasn’t since freshman year. Okay, he got into a little scuffle at a poker game last winter, but it was nothing. He won too much money from some guys, and they objected with their fists.

He’s fighting tonight, the girl insists. Over Andie. She came with Tripp, then ended up with Peter. Tripp got mad and said Peter could have her, that she’s a slut and more trouble than she’s worth. And now they’re beating on each other.

No. I don’t believe it.

2

Dana

He used to tell me everything, and he’s never said a word about being interested in Andie. He couldn’t be so into a girl that he’s fighting over her without me knowing about it. Could he?

Becca shoots me a worried look. A moment later, we’re in the backyard, and there they are, Tripp and Peter, rolling around on the ground pummeling each other.

I wince at every blow, although it looks like Peter’s winning. Still, Tripp tends to travels with a posse of football player friends, and I see three of them in the crowd watching the fight. Peter’s on the team, but he’s not one of those guys who think football is the only thing that matters. He’s not part of the football posse. If Tripp’s friends jump into the fight, Peter could really get hurt. I can’t stand here and watch that.

I lean over to Becca and say, Go that way and start telling people someone called the cops and we all need to get out of here.

She gives me a sharp look, like, Do you really want to get into the middle of this?

Please? I ask.

She does it, putting just the right amount of urgency into the lie as she moves through the crowd. People start leaving. We’re all underage, and nobody wants to get caught and charged with possession of alcohol by a minor.

Peter has Tripp pinned to the ground, but Tripp’s friends pull Peter off. For a second, I think Peter’s going to take a swing at them, but I rush in and grab the arm he has drawn back.

Peter whirls around like he thinks someone else is jumping into the fight. I see his pupils get huge when he sees that it’s me. What the hell are you doing here?

I wince, because he seems so mad. But then he pushes me behind him and turns to face Tripp and his friends, like he thinks they might attack us both and he needs to protect me. Tripp’s furious, but his friends drag him away, telling him the cops are coming.

Once they get twenty feet away, Peter turns around to me and yells, Don’t you ever get into the middle of a fight like that again!

Sorry, I say.

Jesus, Dana! I almost hit you! And any one of Tripp’s friends could have taken a swing at me and hit you instead.

I’m sorry, I say again, noting that he has a swollen, bleeding bottom lip, blood leaking from his nose and a little cut above his right eye.

He pulls the end of his t-shirt up to his nose to try to stop the bleeding, then notices all the people walking away. Why is everybody leaving?

Cops coming, I feel only a little bad about the lie. Come on. Do you have your truck here?

Yeah. Who’d you come with?

Becca, but I don’t know where she is now. Not necessarily another lie. At this second, she could be anywhere.

All right. Come on, he says, and we head around the side of the house and toward the street.

You scared the crap out of me, he says. I couldn’t believe you were here. Promise me you won’t ever do that again.

Even if it’s you fighting? We move into a pool of light from a streetlight, and I try not to look at the muscles of his abdomen that he uncovered by pulling up his shirt.

Yes!

Sorry. I … wanted to get you out of there before the cops came. If I told him I started the rumor to stop the fight, he’d be even madder at me.

Not for any reason, he says.

Okay, still pissed.

We get to the street. People are piling into cars and taking off. I see Becca standing in the shadows by her car, catch her eye and point to myself and then to Peter. She gets it. She even walks back into the shadows, so if Peter looks around for her, he won’t see her.

We get to his truck, and I hold out my hand for the keys.

What? No way, he says.

Your eye is swelling. Can you even see out of it?

I can see just fine.

It’s maybe ten minutes to my house and not much farther to yours. Plus, there are hardly any cars on the road at this hour. And it’s not like I haven’t driven your truck before.

Yeah. In empty parking lots.

He’s been trying to teach me to be a better driver. It’s the other thing I can’t do right that every other teenager seems to love. Not me. I’m bad at it, as awkward and unsure of every move I make behind the wheel of a car as I am with the whole boy-girl thing.

Still, I argue, I can get us home.

None too gently, he pulls open the passenger-side door for me. Dana, get in the truck.

Glaring at him for another three seconds, I give in and climb into his truck. He’s quiet on the drive. I’m still trying to figure out how to ask if the fight really was over Andie when I look up and we’re in front of my house.

I can’t let him go like this. If he got into a fight over a girl, he must be really into her. I can’t stand that idea, and I’m desperate to have some time alone with him.

Come inside. I’ll take care of those cuts, I say.

I’m fine. He presses his fingers all around his nose, grimacing, like he’s checking to see if it’s broken. Just go.

I was so sad, so mad about everything, I couldn’t even look at him for much of the drive home, but I am now, and that’s when I notice. Your nose is bleeding again. Blood’s dripping onto the seat of your truck.

Ahh, shit.

He shifts the t-shirt to try to fix the problem, and suddenly I’m sick of him always trying to push me away.

We should at least stop the bleeding. Do we have to argue over something as simple as that?

Peter

So, the thing is, this girl owns me. I have a hard time saying no to her. And a really hard time staying away from her. I know going into her house is a mistake, even as I get out of the truck, but I still do it. I walk down the driveway to the kitchen door and follow her inside, knowing I’m only making things harder in the long run.

The only excuse I have is that she caught me all jacked up from the fight. It’s so easy to be stupid when I’m like that. When anybody is.

Zach told me once we’re still like cavemen, hard-wired biochemically in times of extreme stress to react with our muscles, instead of our brains. The body sends blood away from our brains — which makes it harder to think — and sends it to our muscles, to help us be stronger, react faster. Without thinking. It’s hard as hell for anybody to think straight all amped up.

I had to hand it to Zach that time. Instead of getting all frustrated and yelling, he explained it. You’ve got to give him points for trying, especially when I did more than my share of yelling at him back then.

So, I know why I’m being stupid right now, even if I am still doing it.

That, and I really want to be here with her, to have her touching me. I want it so bad, even though I know it’s a bad idea.

She takes me by the hand and pulls me into her house, through the mudroom, into the big kitchen. At the sink, she tugs my bloody t-shirt over my head and takes it away. Then she pushes my head forward until I’m nose-down, puts my hand on the bridge of my nose and tells me to pinch hard.

Blood starts to drip onto the clean, white sink.

You’re supposed to tilt your head back, I say.

No, forward. If you tilt it back, all the blood runs down your throat, and you don’t want that. It’ll make you nauseous.

So, all these years I’ve been doing it wrong? Do you know everything?

No, but I know this. Tricia went through a nose-bleed phase. I looked it up, so I’d know what to do.

She walks away for a minute, then comes back and sticks what feels like an ice cube on the back of my neck. Freezing cold against my warm skin, it startles me. I jump, lose my hold on my nose for a few seconds, and blood flows faster until I get a hold again in the right place.

What the hell, Dana?

Give it a few minutes. It should help your nose stop bleeding. Just relax.

With her standing so close to me? Her arm resting on my shoulder, her hand cupping that ice cube to my neck?

Not gonna happen.

This is ridiculous, I say, but as I try to lift my head, she pushes it back down. It’s not like I couldn’t make her stop. I’m a lot stronger than she is, just like Tripp is so much bigger and stronger than Andie.

I’m still pissed about that. It’s not fair, but I’m probably going to take it out on Dana, because she’s here and it’s so damned hard not to touch her, to grab her and kiss her and never let her go.

It’s hard to even keep my distance from her, because the girl insists on taking care of me. It’s the damnedest thing. Nobody’s ever really done that. Julie used to try, after she first came back, but I let her know right away that it was too late. I’d just turned fourteen, and I’d been taking care of myself for a long time with no help. I could damned well do it living with her and Zach. I was mad at the world, so I pushed her away.

I tried that with Dana, too. I really think I did. It didn’t work worth a damn. She is the most stubborn girl on earth, always seems to find a way to get what she wants, and for some reason, she wants to take care of me.

She’s fussing over a bloody nose and a few cuts and scrapes like they’re important. I’ve had so much worse than this. But I don’t tell her that, because I don’t want her to know.

So that little ice cube melts all over me. It drips down my neck, my chest, my back. She tries to catch the trickle running down my neck with her hand at first, and it’s all I can do not to groan, to tell her to stop fucking touching me, before I do something I really shouldn’t. Finally, she manages to tear off a paper towel single-handedly and uses that instead of her hand to catch the water running down my neck.

I survive it all long enough for my nose to stop bleeding. Finally, I can stand up straight, and she backs away a step.

The next thing I know, she’s coming at me with another paper towel. I grab it and take it from her before she can wipe the melted ice water off my chest and my neck. She looks at me like I’m being ridiculous, as if to say, What is wrong with you?

Really? Is she kidding me? Does she think nothing of having her hands all over a guy? That thought pisses me off even more. I know it’s unfair. I get that completely. But I’m not quite rational where she’s concerned. And the sad truth is, even if I can’t have her, I hate the idea of any other guy being anywhere near her. I hate guys looking at her, wanting her, saying things about her.

Which they do. All the fucking time.

Guys talk. Believe me, it’s a damned miracle I fight as seldom as I do, considering what I hear about her at school. They talk about her ass, her long legs, her sweet mouth, her gorgeous hair, her laugh, her pretty brown eyes and which one of them will finally be the one to nail her.

That’s another thing. If I had a million dollars, I’d bet it all on her being a virgin. No doubt in my mind. If our school had a Queen of the Virgins, she’d wear the crown. Not that she makes a big deal about it or tries to say she’s better than anybody else. She just doesn’t fool around with anybody. She’s the prettiest, most amazing girl, and she seems untouchable and untouched. A guy could never smile at her at a party and five minutes later be in a dark, quiet corner with his hands down her pants or have her on her knees in front of him.

So completely not her.

Which means guys see her as a challenge. Some of them try stuff with her, but as far as I know, she’s shot all of them down. I don’t know what I’ll do if, one day, I hear something different from one of those guys.

And I’m here, in her house with her, late at night, might as well be alone because everybody else is asleep, and she wants to play doctor.

She pulls out a stool from the little desk in the kitchen, and the next thing I know, it’s hitting the back of my knees. I sit, thinking if I don’t, she’ll have her hand on my chest, pushing me down.

Next, she’s up on her toes, trying to reach something on the top shelf of one of the kitchen cabinets. I see those toned, tanned legs of hers. Her shirt rides up enough from her jean shorts to give me a glimpse of her flat belly, her little belly button.

I want my hand on her belly, my tongue teasing her belly button.

No hardware of any kind there. Not that kind of girl.

I bet there’s not a mark anywhere on her skin. It’s flawless. The only piercing is on her ears — just one in each lobe.

That’s my good girl.

Okay, not mine. But in my head, she is. In every fantasy I have, she’s absolutely and completely mine. We have the most amazing life in my mind. I’ve had her a million times in my dreams.

She finally manages to get what she needs out of the cabinet, and I manage not to press my mouth to her belly as she does it. She shoots me an odd look as she places a big first aid kit on the counter beside me.

I close my eyes and try to breathe. She thinks I’m doing that because something hurts and wants to know what that is.

I’m fine. Just tired, I say again. Not that she’s listening.

Damned stubborn girl.

I open my eyes and see that she has a piece of damp gauze in her hand, and she’s standing right in front of me, nudging my thighs apart so she can stand between them, way too close. I sit up straight, then have to try very hard not to back up, stool and all. If I do, I’ll look like an idiot, and she’ll want me to explain. I can’t do that, either.

So I sit here, trying not to react in any way. She’s trying to get all the blood off my face, moving slowly and gently like she’s really worried about hurting me.

Which is ridiculous, because I’m really not hurt that badly. My nose is the worst of it, and I didn’t even take a hit to it. I took Tripp down to the ground at one point and landed on his knee, nose first. It’s not broken. I know what that feels like, and I damned sure never had anybody like her to patch me up when it happened.

But I stop insisting I’m fine, because she’s being so gentle with me. Like me hurting in the smallest of ways is important. She always finds a way to surprise me, to make me want her even more. The whole damned world may be completely unfair to me, but every now and then, I get to have this beautiful, amazing girl close to me, touching me, smiling at me, laughing with me, believing in me.

How am I supposed to fight that?

I want to take the cloth