Faking It (Losing It, #2)(46)

There was too much pleasure, too much want, too much beauty beneath me. There was too much everything. The wbone, and I fi





28

Max

I was relaxed and numb and glorious.

Until I wasn’t.

Until the glow faded fingernails scrape tlpt, and I was assaulted my all the thoughts that my mind had been too preoccupied to think before. His arms were tight around me, secure and comforting and caging all at once.

Sex had never been like that for me. It had always been about bodies and sensations and simplicity. Sex with Cade was confusing. It was adding one plus one and getting an answer other than two. It was more than it should have been, and it threw my world off balance.

Cade got up to go to the bathroom, and I slipped my panties back on, and then went to the living room to hunt for my shirt. Cade’s place was the opposite of mine. He had pictures of friends and family on walls and bookshelves. Those shelves actually had books on them, along with mementos and keepsakes that apparently meant enough to him to bring all the way to Pennsylvania with him. His place felt homey. It felt nice and comforting, just like him.

Unease flitted around my chest, but I pushed it down. I tiptoed back to Cade’s room, and my nerves started to rattle. I stared at the rumpled sheets on his bed and just couldn’t make myself get back inside it. Cade was wonderful. Mind-blowingly wonderful. Tonight had been one of the most intense moments of my life.

But that was the problem.

We’d known each other ten days. I looked at the clock, and it read 3:00 A.M. Make that eleven days, but still . . . eleven days. There at the end, he’d looked at me in a way that no other man ever had. I couldn’t even put into words what that look had done to me.

It wrecked me, completely.

It was so honest and raw that it made the rest of my life feel fake and insignificant in comparison. Everything was changing too fast. Even now, thinking about it, I felt like something in me was disintegrating faster than I could hold it together.

I jumped when Cade’s arms wrapped around my middle. His chest pressed into my back, and he placed a few kisses down the side of my neck. His touch was almost enough to deflate my worries, but they stayed there, lurking at the back of my throat, making it harder to breathe. Even so, my body was at ease with his. I leaned back into his arms.

His lips hovered next to my ear, and he whispered, “Have I told you how gorgeous you are?”

I swallowed. “Not in a few minutes.”

“Mmm . . .” The scruff on his jaw tickled the sensitive skin of my neck and he said, “As long as you know.”

He was too good for me. That much was abundantly clear. He was sweet and thoughtful and generous in every way. He never missed an opportunity to reassure me or compliment me or touch me. I wasn’t used to that kind of affection. I shied away from it in every other part of my life, but coming from him I soaked it up like rain on arid ground.

I was tired of thinking, so I turned in his arms and wrapped myself up in his embrace. His chest was still bare, but he’d slipped on a pair of pajama pants that hung low on his hips. I pressed my cheek to his chest and looked down. Seeing our bare feet facing each other pulled something in my chest, and my breath caught in my throat. The intimacy of this embrace made me panic, but at the same time, the thought of moving out of it was painful.

He tugged me down onto the bed and pulled the covers over us. I concentrated on breathing normally as he slipped an arm over my waist. He reached over me to turn off the lamp beside the bed. In the dark, he pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, and I shivered.

I felt fingernails scrapeNBowlmy like crying.

I just . . . this wasn’t my life. Things like this didn’t happen to me, and if they did, it never lasted. Girls like me didn’t get guys like Cade.

Maybe it would take a week, maybe less, but I would end up screwing this up. It was what I did. The only thing I was better at than destroying things was singing, and with my behavior today, I was beginning to realize I was in danger of destroying that, too.

More than anything, I didn’t trust myself. With Mace I’d been obsessed with him a few weeks ago. I liked him enough to go through this elaborate scheme just to keep my parents from scaring him off. Then boom, I woke up and couldn’t care less about our relationship.

That was how I worked. Or rather . . . how I didn’t work.

I couldn’t do that to Cade. What if we got together, and I woke up one day and wanted out? I liked him more than I liked myself, so I’d probably end up sacrificing my own happiness to keep from hurting him. It would be just like all the years I played at being Alex to keep my parents happy. But instead of blond curls and cheerleading, it would likely mean kids and a minivan.

I may not have been the most self-aware person in the world, but I knew enough to know that if I let myself care about him, I would sabotage my life to better his.

Or I would sabotage it all just because I could.

Or maybe I wouldn’t have to sabotage it. Cade was obviously getting over that Bliss girl. Now, she . . . she made sense with him in a way I never would. What if being with me was just a phase, an overcorrection after things didn’t work out with her?

How long would it take for him to realize that I wasn’t really what he wanted? And how badly would it hurt when he did?

I felt sick from my stomach to my soul.

I waited until Cade’s breathing evened out, and I was certain that he was asleep. Then I slipped out of his arms and slipped on my shorts. I’d only wanted a little space to think, to breathe. But the minute he was no longer touching me, my blood pumped faster, singing run, run, run with every beat. I looked back at him, the hard lines of his body, the relaxed expression on his face, and I did just that.