All Over You (Unforgettable You, Book 1.5) (8 page)

“
So what, now I’m some dirty secret you’re trying to keep?” he asks, a hard edge to his tone.

“
No, no, that’s not it. It’s just that…” My voice fades off to a whisper and then nothing.

“
Don’t worry. I get it,” he bites out and climbs out of bed. After dealing with the condom, he pads over to where our clothes are strewn on the floor, collects his and swiftly begins to pull them on.

I watch him with the sheet fisted in my hand and pressed tight above my chest. “Scott,” I say softly, unsure of what else I plan to say, if anything at all.

“
Are you starting to feel
that way
about me now?” he lightly mocks, his stare unwavering as he deftly buttons his long-sleeved shirt.

Embarrassment brings a fresh flood of heat to my face. I immediately lower my gaze, unable to meet his.

“
Don’t think this is the end. I’m going to get out of your hair and give you a chance to get your head together but then we
are
going to talk. We—” he motions between us “—are not even close to being over.”

My back goes up but the hard look in his eyes stops the protest on my lips. Okay, given what just happened maybe we do need to talk. I guess I owe him that. What I’m going to say is anyone’s guess.

I nod numbly, which appears to satisfy him.

“
Good, then I’ll call you tomorrow.”

At this point, I think he’s going to leave. Instead he walks over to me, lowers his head as he cups the nape of my neck and kisses me. Bemused, my mouth parts reflexively for his tongue. And what I initially think is going to be short and sweet, turns deep and drugging. By the time he ends the kiss, the edges of my vision is blurred, my senses overloaded. I’m halfway to being completely turned on again.

“
Just tell them you were showing me your etchings. That ought to hold off the questions, huh?”

“
Funny,” I murmur dryly.

With one final look over his shoulder, he exits the room. I shiver and burrow under my covers.

What the hell am I playing at having sex with Scott? Isn’t there some unwritten rule that says you don’t have sex with your ex? An ex is an ex not by chance but for a reason. And I had good reasons to break up with him.

I shake my head like that will clear whatever must have been fogging up my brain since he kissed me. Oh who am I fooling, if nothing else, Scott and I have always shared an intense physical attraction. The second I’d seen him during the freshmen campus tour, I’d been in lust. And those feelings had only grown in the months that followed.

That’s what sex with him does to me, it makes me susceptible and weak. Crap, it’s not only the sex, it’s being with him, clothes on or off. Scott is charming and engaging even when he’s not putting forth one iota of effort. I seriously hadn’t stood a chance when he’d turned his beautiful green eyes on me, his smile half sexual heat, half boyish charm. Add his looks to that potent mixture and I was a goner from the get go.

I drag my pleasantly sore body from bed, trying hard not to think about those feelings and instead try to figure out what the hell I’m going to say when I see him again. I dash across the hall to the bathroom and have the shower on by the time I hear a knock on the door.

“
Hey, Bec, you in there?”

It’s Olivia who no doubt had an interesting conversation with Scott. Discussing this with her right now would require me having to explain things I don’t want to talk about. Stripped naked, I step into the shower before I respond. “Yeah. Do you need something in here?” I shout above the spray of water pouring down on me.

After several long seconds of marked silence, she replies, “Naw, it can wait until you come out.”

Great. Just what I need. She’s going to want to know what’s going on with Scott. What am I going to tell her when I don’t even know myself?

* * *

Twenty minutes later, dressed in gray sweats and a white cotton t-shirt, I venture out of my bedroom. While I was getting dressed, I didn’t hear anyone moving around in the apartment and had hoped against hope Olivia had gone down to Zach’s. No such luck. I meet her sitting on the couch, her sock-clad feet tucked under her as she flips through one of April’s fashion magazines.

Her gaze snaps to mine the second I come into view. A wry smile spreads across her face. “You know better than to think you can wait me out.”

After only a year and my roomies know me too damn well.

“
What are you doing home? I thought you went out with Zach or were down at his place.”

She rolls her eyes and gives me an exasperated look. “I do have a life apart from Zach you know. I had dinner with Emily.”

Emily is a sophomore like us and a recent transferee to Warwick. She’s come around the apartment a couple times and always struck me as shy and withdrawn. I’m sure that’s why Liv made a point of befriending her. If the girl made an effort with her appearance, she’d be stunning.

“
Anywho,” she says, patting a spot on the couch beside her. “Come on, don’t be scared. This won’t hurt. It’ll be as painless as what you were doing with your ex in the bedroom.”

My face flames up like a torch as I trudge over and drop down beside her. “Seriously, don’t even ask,” I say, a bit of sulk in my voice. “It was a mistake.”
An incredibly satisfying, mutual orgasmic mistake.

A look of understanding steals overs her face. Ah yeah, right. She totally understands. She’d slept with Zach before they’d officially started going out and then she’d discovered he didn’t want a girlfriend.

Rat.

Sure it had all turned out in the end but she hadn’t known it would then. It hadn’t ended well for me and Scott before and if we get back together again, I don’t see it ending any different.

“
I take it that means you’re not back together again. I mean this is the second time…”

“
The first time we honestly didn’t do anything. You know how I get when I drink too much.” I don’t do it often but I have done it before.

Olivia nods in agreement. “But this time you guys had sex.” It’s not a question but a statement seeking confirmation.

I say nothing and avoid her eyes, which is all the confirmation she needs.

“
Look, I don’t know what happened between you two and I’m not going to push you to tell me, but I do know the guy is crazy about you. Is there no possible way of you guys getting past it?”

My gaze snaps to hers. “I have gotten past it. I’ve moved on with my life.” My reply comes out sharper than I intend so I soften it with a chagrined smile.

My roommate arches a perfectly manicured eyebrow at me, giving me that
who do you think you’re fooling
look.

“
Today didn’t mean anything,” I protest, the lie echoing in my head, taunting me.

Olivia regards me for a good ten seconds, her gaze drilling into me. “You know damn well you don’t even believe that,” she says softly, almost a whisper. The whisper lands on my ears with a greater impact than if she’d shouted the words.

“
Okay fine, I don’t want it to mean anything.”

Chuckling softly, she gives me an approving nod. “So what are you going to do?”

“
He wants to talk.”

“
Can I offer you some advice?”

What the hell, since it’s not as if I’m doing such a bang-up job handling things. I shrug. “Sure hit me.” I’m pretty sure I know what she’s going to say. It’s along the lines of me agreeing to give him another chance and then listing all the reasons why. Olivia is all for second chances, especially since she got together with Zach.

“
Talk to him.”

I’m waiting for more but apparently that’s it. I eye her quizzically.

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Nope, that’s it. Talk to him.”

Talk to him.
Easier said than done.

S
COTT

Getting Becca to meet me at the coffee shop to talk a week later hadn’t been easy. Getting her to actually listen to me is going to be even tougher. If there’s one thing I can say about my ex, she’s a stubborn one. So stubborn she sometimes makes me want to pull my fuckin’ hair out.

I watch her as she weaves her way between the tables and toward me. She’s wearing dark-blue pants that could pass for jeans and one of the university sweatshirts. She looks good. My eyes never leave her.

She eyes me warily as she hooks her purse over the chair across from me and sits down. I get why she’s wary of me. We want the same thing—each other—only she’s too scared to admit it. But I need to put her at ease. I’m tired of dealing with her, her guard always twenty feet high.

“Thanks for agreeing to talk.”

She gives a brief nod.

So much for putting her at ease. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

“You know you’re driving me nuts, right?” Honesty is the best policy so I start with that. Not that I have any intentions of lying to her but I have been known to fudge the truth when the situation called for it.

Her blue eyes widen and her brows shoot up toward her hairline. “Me?” she sputters, her voice a mixture of amusement and bewilderment. “How am I driving
you
nuts?” She asks as if the idea is preposterous. Like she doesn’t know what little it takes for her to drive me around the bend.

“Oh I don’t know. Try going out of your way to avoid me after we have sex,” I say casually, making sure to keep my voice low.

Our eyes lock as her face turns red with embarrassment. She hastily drops her gaze to her clasped hands resting on the table, her thumbs chasing each other in circles. Classic signs of a nervous Becca.

“It was a mistake,” she mumbles at her hands.

“Mistake? You don’t make mistakes, remember?”

Her spine goes stiff and her head snaps up. I knew that would get her attention.

“I never said that.” She goes all squinty-eyed on me, pushing her chin out.

“You never
had
to say it.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Her jaw is getting tighter by the second.

I scoot forward in my chair and lean across the table toward her. She doesn’t pull back, which is a good sign.

“It means you’re pretty well perfect and I’m a screw-up. Look I admit it, Becca, I screwed up. I shouldn’t have— Well I should have— Crap. When you thought you were—you know—I shouldn’t have disappeared or whatever. I’ve had a chance to really think back to that time and you’re right. I should have been there for you. I made a mistake because I was scared. More scared than I’ve ever been about anything. But you’ve got to believe that I would never have let you deal with a baby on your own. I swear on my grandmother’s grave when I tell you I would have been there for you.”

I’m sure she didn’t expect me to cop to all of it. Essentially admit that during that time I had been hard to pin down. To her that had been me avoiding her. I’d been crazy busy then and I hadn’t had a lot of time of my own but I could have returned some of her calls. But I’d been scared and I’d needed time inside my head to think. Talking to Becca had only made everything more real and terrifying.

On top of that, I’d been worried she’d find out what I was really doing at home and I’d never wanted her to find out that way—by accident.
I’d
wanted to tell her and I’d intended to when I got back. Of course before I could, she’d dumped me.

But I think I’m finally getting through to her because she’s just staring at me, her lips parted, her eyes wide like she’s in shock. I can’t read her mind—although sometimes I wish I could—so I don’t have a clue about what’s going on inside her head right now.

Her mouth closes and she swallows hard. Seconds tick by while I wait for the verdict because that’s what it will be. If she shoots me down, there’s nothing else I can do. I’ve played my final card. And to tell you the truth, I’m tired of trying this hard and being shot down every time. Last year, I think I’d left at least two dozen messages and texts begging her to call me, to talk to me. She hadn’t returned a single one and had refused to see me when I’d gone to her dorm. 

“Scott.”

The heavy weight on my chest doesn’t go away but it becomes lighter when she whispers my name on a long, drawn-out sigh. I can practically feel her softening toward me.

Encouraged, I push forward. “The point is I make mistakes. I do. Yeah, we all do but some of us make more than others. And I fully admit I fucked up. The other mistake I made was letting you dump me like that. I should’ve known there had to be more to it than what you said. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing by giving you space. But when you wouldn’t take my calls or answer my texts and refused to speak to me, I got pissed. I figured if you really didn’t want to be with me, I’d find someone who did.” Angela had been the “lucky” rebound girl.