First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (86 page)

I
really
like it.

The warmth of his lips against mine somehow spreads all throughout my body as he kisses me, and I can barely contain the overwhelming feeling of happiness blossoming inside me. I’m shaking, but for once in my life, it isn’t from fear.

Owen caresses my cheek again, his lips still clinging to mine as if he wanted this just as desperately as I did, and then he slowly embraces me and pulls me close to him. I feel his warm arms around me, his strong chest pressing against mine, but just when I feel like I could die and go to Heaven, the gates of Hell open up instead.

“You know... I always had a thing for you back when I was still in high school. You were really cute even back then.”

“I was twelve, Darren!” I try to counter, but my voice sticks in my throat and all that comes out is a frightened squeak. I’m terrified. Where is Micah? Where is my phone? Maybe I can call him and get him to come home!

My phone is downstairs.

I’d never have come here if I knew he lived with Darren.

Oh God... come home already, Micah! Please!

“I saw how you looked at me back then. You were really into me,” he whispers, still coming closer.

He must be delusional, I think. Into him? Darren creeped me out from the first time Micah invited him over. The way he stared at me, the way he talked about me as if I wasn’t there... I couldn’t have been into him any less.

Even though Darren isn’t very tall, he still towers over me somehow as he comes closer and closer. He’s no longer a short, burly college student, but a giant, horrifying monster. I’ve backed as far away from him as I can. Any further and I’m on the bed.

Darren closes the distance between us in two long strides and suddenly his thick, muscular arms are around me. This isn’t a hug, and even if it is, I don’t want it! I feel like I’m being smothered!

“Let go of me!”

I turn my face away as he tries to kiss me, and his lips brush against my cheek.

“I love a girl who plays hard to get,” he growls, and he runs a hand softly down my back. My legs shake as he slowly, inexorably pushes me down onto the bed.

No. Please, God, no! Don’t let this happen to me.

My breath comes in uncontrollably quick, short gasps, and I feel dizzy. My body locks up, paralyzed with fear, as he lays me down onto the mattress.

I’m so terrified that I can’t even scream.

“Let go of me!” I scream, wriggling out of Owen’s arms and pushing him away.

“Maria, what’s wrong?” he asks in alarm, raising his hands to try to calm me down.

I’m off the couch in a flash, but the triggered memory is already fading. Now I just look like a lunatic. Again.

“I hate you Darren. I fucking hate you.”

“I’m sorry Owen. I can’t do this,” I whimper, trying not to burst into tears in front of him. “God, I want to so much but I can’t!”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry,” says Owen, his voice calm and reassuring. He’s trying so hard to put up with me, but I’m such a horrible wreck. I don’t deserve him any more than I deserve Tina.

“I have to go,” I blurt out, and I run for the door.

Before he can say another word, I’m out the door and racing through the falling snow toward my apartment. I slide on a patch of ice, barely catching myself before I fall, and then burst into my apartment.

“Tina! I need to talk to you,” I call out as the familiar, comforting warmth of the apartment engulfs me.

“Can it wait until after the movie?” calls back Tina from the couch, and my jaw drops as I see her snuggled up next to Craig with a bowl of popcorn and an old, black and white kung-fu movie.

“Well then! Um... sure. Don’t mind me,” I stammer embarrassedly.

I bow out gracefully, leave Tina and Craig to their movie date, and race up the stairs to my bedroom. The door locks behind me with a loud, comforting click, and I grab both books from beneath my pillow.

Cramped wrist from grading papers or not, I have a long night of writing ahead of me.

Wednesday, March 6 – 3:00 PM

Maria

“Good afternoon, everyone,” says the girl standing at the front of the classroom where Owen ought to be. She has short, frizzy red hair and thick-rimmed, purple glasses.

“I’m Liz Delaney, and I’ll be your TA for the rest of the course,” she continues as she turns and writes out her name on the dry-erase board. “If you could, please hand your homework to the front and then we can get started on the lecture.”

My hand shoots up so quickly that my shoulder pops.

“Yes?” asks Liz, pointing at me with her marker.

“What happened to Owen?”

“Oh, him? I think he quit,” she answers with a shrug as she collects all the homework assignments into an orderly stack. “The professor pulled me out of Thursday’s section and put me here instead.”

“Oh,” I say, my heart sinking into my stomach.

“He graded all of your assignments before he quit, though. I’ll give them back at the end of class.”

“
No he didn’t,
” I think. “
I did. I graded my own paper just before he kissed me.
”

I haven’t talked to Owen since the kiss. He called me twice after I panicked and ran away from him, but I ignored his calls. I was so scared to hear his voice—scared that he’d reject me for being so screwed up—that I didn’t even listen to his messages. I finally worked up the nerve to call him back yesterday, but he didn’t answer either.

“Okay class, let’s get started with the material from chapter fourteen,” calls out Liz. Any questions about Professor Meador’s lecture yesterday?”

The rest of the lecture passes by in a haze. Owen’s departure completely occupies my attention, and everything my new teacher says flies past me without registering. What happened? Where did he go? I should be paying attention to Liz’s lecture, but in my mind, I’m back across the bridge and banging on the door of Owen’s apartment, wishing I could be with him.

I must have scared him away. That freak-out was the last straw for him, wasn’t it? He quit being a teaching assistant so that he wouldn’t have to see me anymore—so he wouldn’t have to deal with my crazy outbursts and my broken memories.

What if he really thinks I’m crazy, and now he’s done with me? The idea breaks my heart, and it takes all my concentration not to start crying. I can’t really blame him, though; he gave me plenty of chances and tried so hard to wait out my issues, and I flipped out on him at the worst possible moment. God, I’m such a mess.

The classroom empties out around me as the lecture ends, and I force myself out into the gray. I stare at my feet as I trudge through the melting snow toward my lab at the far eastern edge of campus. I still have work to do tonight, and neither depression nor freezing cold, slush-filled shoes will change that.

All I can manage today are mindless, repetitive experiments. My thoughts are still wrapped around Owen, and I can’t focus on anything complicated. The hours fly by pointlessly as I perform meaningless assays and experiments with no possible conclusion.

I can’t do this. I have to go find him.

I pop my last experiment into the automatic scanner, set it to run overnight, and then I head for the door. I have to find Owen, and I have to find him right now.

The snow is falling again when I leave the building, and it gets heavier and heavier as I make my way across campus. My heart sinks further into my stomach with every step, and it feels like it’s dragging my lungs with it. There’s an empty pit in my chest unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

I stop dead in my tracks on the suspension bridge as Darren’s leering face lights up inside my mind.

No... I’ve felt the emptiness before. I felt it when Darren raped me.

He ripped part of me away and tore it to shreds that day, and I’ll never get that piece back again. The feeling isn’t quite the same, but it’s similar enough to open the gates to the darkness and let all the nightmares out to hurt me again.

The icy wind buffets me as I stand at the railing to the bridge and stare down into the blackness below. I can hear the sound of the waterfall crashing down on the rocks down in the gorge. The Cornell newspaper says that they’re going to build a new fence here because of how many students commit suicide.

It’d be so easy. All I’d have to do is take one little jump, and it’d all be over.

No more fears, no more nightmares, no confusing feelings that I want to feel even though they hurt me... I could leave all that behind. I’d never have to be scared again.

I could even escape Darren down there in the gorge.

“But then I lose everything,” I whisper.

The air is so cold that my tongue nearly freezes as I speak, and the icy fog of my breath flies on the wind off into the night sky.

If I do that—if I take that final step—Darren wins. He’ll have taken everything from me, even Owen.

I break free from my scary, suicidal reverie and hurry across the bridge. I don’t know what came over me back there, and I’m too frightened to dwell on it. I have to go find Owen.

My heart lifts as the long staircase down to my apartment comes into sight through the thickly falling snow. It’s not so much seeing the stairs that raises my spirits, but rather that Owen is leaning against the lamppost with his arms crossed and a plaid scarf wrapped around his cast like a glove.

I hurry the rest of the way down the hill and then slow down as I cautiously approach him. Snow swirls around him and glitters in the lamplight as he waves to me.

“Hi Maria.”

“Um... hi,” I answer awkwardly. “How are you?”

“Good... you?”

“Good enough.”

I stare silently at him, and neither of us says anything for a long time. I feel as if neither of us knows where to start or what we want to say—we just know that something needs to be said.

“Maria?”

“Yeah?”

“I... I want to apologize for kissing you like that,” he stammers nervously. “I’m sorry that I pushed you too fast, that I made you uncomfortable.”

I’m dumbstruck. It wasn’t his fault! How could he possibly think it’s his fault that I panicked when he kissed me? I kissed him first!

He shuffles his feet and kicks snow off his boots, and I catch sight of the scar on his jaw as the lamp shines on his face.

That’s
why he thinks it’s his fault, isn’t it? He’s so used to being beaten down—being made to feel like he’s a failure—that he actually believes it.

His worst scars are invisible, just like mine.

“Owen, please believe me when I tell you this, okay?” I tell him as I move closer. “It wasn’t you. I promise you more than anything in the world that it wasn’t you.”

“What was it, then?” he asks, raising his hands pleadingly. His eyes are wide with concern, but I can’t tell him. I just can’t.

I shake my head and stay silent.

“Can’t tell me?”

“No,” I whisper.

“It’s not something about me, though? Please, Maria—tell me how I can help.”

“It’s not you. Just... just hang in there with me,” I respond, almost begging him at the end. “I’m trying. I
promise
I’m trying.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers back. In the white light of the streetlamp and the falling snow, his gray eyes and warm smile are stunningly handsome.

“Owen... the new TA said that you quit today. Was it anything I did?” I ask, and I brace myself for his reply.

He takes a long, deep breath before finally answering. He’s going to call me crazy. I just know it.

“I quit because I couldn’t do my job anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’m supposed to be impartial toward my students and to give all of you equal attention,” he explains. “How am I supposed to do that when I have a favorite student? How can I teach a classroom when all I want to do is put down that damned marker, march straight over to your desk, and kiss you in front of everyone?”

I draw a sharp breath as he answers me, and he winces as if waiting for me to hit him for saying it.

“I... this is all my fault. I’m so sorry,” I stammer. “I’ll switch to a different section. Don’t quit your job over me!”

“No no,” he quickly cuts me off. “I didn’t
quit
. Did Liz say that? I just traded schedules with her. She takes my Wednesday and Friday classes and I get hers on Tuesday and Thursday. I didn’t quit entirely.”

“Oh fuck her!” I blurt out, and I cover my mouth in surprise and embarrassment as my voice echoes around me. Liz turned me into a nervous mess all day, and in the end, it was over nothing!

Owen bursts out laughing.

“Yeah, I’ve still got the job, so don’t feel guilty. Hell, you shouldn’t feel guilty even if I did quit.”

“I still would, though,” I whisper, and he smiles at me. His smile melts me even out here in the freezing winter night.

The snow falls around me as I stare at him and try to work up the nerve to speak again. It’s hard to find words when all I want to do is hold him, but it’s even harder to hold him when I can’t trust my own memories to let me.

“So, up for some cocoa?” I ask, breaking the ice. He nods happily and looks relieved that I finally said something. Maybe he’s feeling awkward too.

“Sure. Your place or mine?”

“Mine,” I answer. “But one thing first.”

I quickly close the gap between us, put my hands on his shoulders, and lean in to kiss him.

God, I wanted this. No... I
needed
this. My knees get weak as he kisses me back, just barely parting his lips. He places his hands over mine and squeezes them gently, inviting me to come as close to him as I like, but leaving me room to get away so I feel safe. I feel more than just safe with him tonight.

I close my eyes and listen to the wind blowing around us as our kiss goes deeper and deeper. I don’t know if it’s accidental when our tongues touch, but I like it and try to let it happen again. My mind is so full of warm, wonderful feelings that I can barely keep my thoughts straight. I’m not used to being this happy, and I almost feel like I’m going to cry.

When I finally pull back for a gasp of air and open my eyes, I can’t keep the smile off my face and neither can he. I’ve never felt this happy before in my life, and judging by Owen’s angelic smile, I don’t think he has either.