Falling into You (Falling #1)(31)
“Then what do you think we were talking about?”
“Us.”
She pushes past me, tilts her head to the side and peels her hair free from the braid, kicking off her flip flops. “There is no us. There never was and never will be.”
I don’t answer that, because she’s right. But so wrong. There will be an us. She just hasn’t seen it yet. She’ll resist it, because it’s wrong on so many levels. I’m her dead boyfriend’s older brother. And she knows nothing about me. I’m bad for her. She’s underage, and I shouldn’t encourage her drinking. She’s obviously using old man Jack to cope, and I understand that all too well. But she’s still only twenty, which is just too young to be drinking like that, straight from the bottle like a jaded alcoholic.
She finishes unbraiding her hair and shakes it out, combs through it with her fingers. “You should go,” she says, disappearing into the bedroom. I hear cloth rustling and hit the ground. “I have class.”
I’m a shameless asshole. I know this, because only a shameless asshole would move around the counter to see into her room. Which is what I do. She’s in a matching bra and panties set, pink with black polka dots. Facing away from me, tight round ass so delectably perfect in the boyshort panties. Oh god, oh god. She feels my presence, twists her neck to glare at me.
“Well you’re an asshole.”
“Should’ve closed your door.”
“I told you to leave.” She reaches into a drawer and unfolds a pair of jeans, steps into them.
Watching a girl dress is almost as hot as watching her strip.
“But I didn’t and you knew it.”
“I didn’t think you’d blatantly watch me change. Fucking pervert.”
I grin at her, the smile my buddies call the panty-dropper. “I’m not a pervert. I just appreciate art.”
She smirks. “Smooth, Colton. Very smooth.”
I grin. No one calls me Colton. No one. I’m Colt. “It wasn’t a line, Nell. It was the truth.” I turn up the wattage on the smile, stepping toward her.
She tenses, clutching a pale blue T-shirt in white-knuckle fists. “What are you doing?”
I don’t answer. I continue toward her, step by deliberate step. I feel like predator, a lion stalking prey. Her eyes grow wide, doe eyes. Her nostrils flare, her hands twist the shirt, her breasts swell as she breathes deeply, swelling until they threaten to spill out. God I wish they would. Like I said, shameless. She’s just inside the room, which is tiny. Barely space for the bed and dresser. I’m inches away from her again, and I could see her nipples if I looked down, probably. At the very least, I’d be treated to a huge expanse of porcelain cleavage. I don’t look though. I meet her eyes, let my raw desire, my weltering boil of emotions show in my gaze as I reach past her. My hand brushes her shoulder just beside her bra strap as I grasp the edge of the door. I’m so close, now. Her breasts are touching my chest, my arm touching both her shoulder and ear. Her eyes slide closed, breaking the contact, and I hear her breath catch. She wilts slightly, the tension bleeding out of her, and she tilts her head to rest against my arm.
Her eyes flick open, bright with renewed determination, and she straightens so she’s not touching me. I pull the door closed between us. Just before I step out of her front door, I take one of my business card from my wallet and set in on the table, on top of the packet of guitar strings. I close her apartment door with deliberate noise, so she’ll know I left.
The walk back to the subway and the subsequent ride to my apartment in Queens is long, providing me with too much time to ask myself exactly what the fuck I’m getting myself into. Nell is bad news. She’s got major damage, a baggage train a mile long. And so do I.
I toss my guitar on the bed and go downstairs to the shop. I set my phone in the dock and blast Black Label Society’s “Stillborn” loud enough to drown my thoughts as I throw myself in the 396 big block I’m rebuilding. It’s for a classic ’69 Camaro, which didn’t mean shit to me until Nell showed up, and then all I can think of is Kyle’s Camaro, which I restored from a bucket of rust in a junk heap into mint condition, and then left behind when I moved here.
I loved that car, and it hurt so bad to leave it behind, but Dad had paid for it, so I couldn’t take it. Never mind that every penny of the parts came from me, or that I’d spent the blood, sweat and tears to restore it. The seed money came from Dad, and if I moved to New York instead of attending Harvard, then I brought nothing but what I bought myself. That was the deal.
At least Kyle took care of it.
I snorted as I thought of Dad’s expectation that I go to Harvard. He’d actually thought that would happen. Fucking ridiculous. Even now, almost ten years later, I can’t fathom what went through his head. I’d fit in at Harvard like a bull in china shop.
My thoughts return to Nell. Sanding piston rings is boring busy work, so of course I can’t help but think of her. Of her sweet crystalline voice and her piercing green-gray eyes and her fine, fine body. Goddamn it, I’m in trouble. Especially when I think of the deep-seated ache in her gaze, in the desperate way she drank that whiskey, as if the numbness was a friend, as if the burn was a welcome respite from reality. I know that pain, and I want to take it from her. I want to know her thoughts, know what haunts her.
I mean, of course I know. Kyle died, and she saw it happen. But that’s not really it. Something else drives her. Something else eats at her, some guilt. And I want to know what, so I can absolve her of it. Which, of course, is impossible and stupid and reckless.