Beg You to Trust Me (Lindon U #2)(51)
I stare at her as she says, “As much as I don’t want to, I think about that night a lot. Because I have no clue who I let lead me upstairs or who I let touch my body. And you’re so nice, everybody seems to like you, which makes me think you’d…you would have taken care of me. Made it good. But I don’t know. And that sucks. It’s…yeah. It just sucks.”
Her eyes go to her lap. She picks at her leggings and shakes her head. “When I woke up in the room, I was tired, so tired, and I was confused. My head hurt, my…other things hurt. I was bleeding a little.”
My teeth grind.
“I knew what I’d done,” she whispers, voice thick with emotion that I wish I could help ease somehow. “I knew what had happened from the stories my sisters would tell me about their experiences with exes. I’ve read books. Seen movies. The harder I tried putting the pieces together, the more confused I’d get. Believing somebody like you had taken my virginity made it not seem so bad.”
Her cheeks heat, and her eyes stay on anything but me no matter how bad I want her to look. “The thing is, I never thought sex was a big deal. I always made light of it like you did. But that night changed my opinion. Because I should have remembered having it, but I don’t. I should have figured out by now if I told him to keep going or to stop, but I don’t. Just because I liked kissing him didn’t mean I liked…other things. And part of me doesn’t want to remember at this point.”
“Why not?” I find myself wondering.
Her eyes finally travel to my face. “If you had the chance to forget the choices you made instead of looking them in the eye, wouldn’t you?”
Lips pressing together, I study her. “What if your choices weren’t entirely yours? Wouldn’t you want to know? There’d been alcohol, and that makes people do stuff they wouldn’t normally. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself, Skylar.”
She swallows. “I didn’t say no. So how could the choice not have been mine? I just told you that I liked—”
“I liked the women I kissed too,” I say bluntly, seeing her wince. “But that doesn’t mean we had to do more. I’ve never once hooked up with a drunk woman because I always wanted them to be sober when they made that choice.”
When her eyes return to the screen, I nod to myself knowing she doesn’t want me to keep going. The longer the silence lasts, the antsier I get about what the hell happened at our party.
Aiden was right.
It should have never fucking happened.
As the movie goes on, the bowl of popcorn empties, and Skylar becomes restless. Her body squirms and focus shifts until she moves a fraction.
One little fraction until her knee is touching my leg again.
Except this time, she doesn’t move it.
The move may be tiny, but the leap is big.
And I’m diving headfirst after her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DANNY
Incoherent mumbles come from the girl whose hair is the only thing between her face and the cool passenger window as we drive. I’m not surprised she’s dead to the world considering she’d fallen asleep right before the movie ended last night. Not wanting to move her, I’d let her sleep until my legs were numb from the way they were tangled with hers. She’d looked peaceful, carefree when she slept. Only when she’d shifted enough to lay down on the other cushion had I gotten up, covered her with one of the blankets that Caleb’s ma gave him for the house, and set an alarm on my phone to get us up early enough to head back to her dorm and grab her bag before driving to the airport.
I roll my shoulder, which aches ten times worse than usual because of the armchair I slept in all night, as I steer. I didn’t want Skylar waking up in an unfamiliar place and freaking out. Not when she’d already experienced that once in our house. If stretching out at a weird angle to make sure she saw me across the room when she woke would make her feel secure, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Even though Coach will probably give me a lecture when I wince through warmups.
“You doing okay over there, Blondie?” I muse chipperly, causing a groan to escape her. I refrain from snickering as I glance into the side mirror that faces her. I’m pretty sure she’s drooling, but I know better than to tease.
We drive over a bump, making her head bump into the window. Her hand comes up and swipes at her mouth, cracking my lips into a bigger grin that I try keeping to myself. When she peels herself away from the glass and turns her head toward me, I make sure I’m solely focused on the road so she can’t see the waver of my lips.
“Do you know who else was this peppy early in the morning?” she asks me gingerly.
I shake my head. “No. Who?”
She reaches for the travel mug of coffee I poured for her before we headed to grab her bag and draws it to her naked lips. When she walked out of her dorm this morning, her face was clean of the makeup she’d slept in, and her hair was brushed and resting over her shoulders. She’d changed into a pair of baggy sweatpants that looked like they could fit two of her inside and was wearing that puffy coat again.
Did she still look ten times better than most girls I know? Yes. Sexy in a laid-back sort of way. To me, there’s nothing hotter than a girl who’s completely comfortable around you in anything.