Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
The control freak in me that studied into the wee hours to ensure I had perfect grades craves information and wants to demand he spill the goods. But as he folds his arm around me and ushers me into the elevator, the warmth of his touch is a welcome distraction from the world outside. I’m not sure I want to risk cooling the heat between us for what will most certainly strike a foreboding tone.
Once we’re inside the car, Adam joins us, and it’s him, not Damion, who punches in our destination. Damion and I face forward, but there’s a thick layer of awareness between us, an intimacy that isn’t about sex as much as it is about me going home with him, and not to his home, but ours. I am warm inside and out and a tad bit nervous, which is really quite ridiculous. This is Damion, who I have known all my life and who I love more than life. Why would I be nervous about the launch of our life together? Especially when I believe the root of who we are began decades before this night.
My mind travels to that kiss in the closet when we were seven, then the kiss at my front door before he left for college, and somehow, I detour to my mother. Of course, after her explosion in my apartment, it’s really no surprise, but the way she treated Damion and the things she said don’t even align with the way she’s felt about him most of our lives. Even after I’d cried that day he’d kissed me on my porch, after I’d declared the end of me and Damion, my mother had defended him. She’d told me we were young, and if it was meant to be, we’d find each other again. And we have, and that matters. It matters so very much, and yet she didn’t share my joy with me today. She tried to destroy the man I love, tried to destroy us, me and Damion, and for what? Or rather, who?
His father? Who she’s having an affair with?
My mind flashes back to the past…
Damion and I had both been seventeen, or maybe he’d just turned eighteen. We’d hit the movies together and saw the new Hunger Games movie, an easy thing to do when my mother and his girlfriend had been out with friends, separately, of course, while my father was working late. Damion’s parents never really questioned where he was or what he was doing, and I swear my mother fretted over him more than they did.
She was good to him then but she was horrible to him tonight.
I return to the memory.
We’d had fun that night, but then we always did, laughing together and trying to catch popcorn in our mouths, but I’d been acutely aware of how soon he’d leave for college. So was he. It was there between us, a living, breathing temptation, and a few times I think he’d been close to kissing me, but he had a girlfriend. Another reality I’d been acutely aware of pretty much every second I was with him.
We’d stopped by a diner on the way home, and to our shock, we’d found my mother and his father together. I’d wanted to approach the table, but Damion had caught my arm. I sink back into that moment, reliving it:
“No,” he insists. “We don’t know what this is.” He captures my hand and all but drags me out of the joint.
The instant we’re outside, out of view of the diner windows, I whirl on him, “What are you suggesting is going on between them?”
“We don’t know, Alana,” he bites out, his hands settling on his hips.
“You think they’re having an affair? My mother does not like your father. She calls him arrogant.”
“You call me arrogant,” he reminds me.
“You are arrogant, Damion West.”
“And yet you’re out with me tonight.”
“As a friend.”
“Right,” he bites out. “As a friend.” He scrubs his jaw and then offers me a view of his broad shoulders as he walks away.
I blink after him, stunned for a few beats, before I catch up with him, confusion setting my thoughts into a spin. “Why are you angry at me?”
“I’m not angry at you, Alana,” he snaps, but he doesn’t look at me.
I catch his arm, and he halts, piercing me with sharp eyes. “What are you trying to do right now?”
“What do you mean?” I whisper, that confusion leaving me unsteady.
“What do you think touching me achieves?”
“What? Are you thinking someone will think we’re together?”
“Everyone but us thinks we’re together, Alana. Wake up.” He starts walking again.
I double-step and catch up to him again, but I don’t speak this time, and I certainly don’t touch him. The three-block walk was the most uncomfortable few minutes I’ve ever shared with Damion that didn’t involve one of his girlfriends, none of who thought me and Damion were together. I want to say that, but it just doesn’t feel right.