Recklessly (29 page)

Dylan leaned back against his headboard and smirked. “
The Notebook?
For someone
so
foggy
on the details you seem to know a lot about the plot.”

Wes laughed. “I spend time with tons of women! It may have come up once or twice…or watched once or twice... with me in the room. Okay, I watched it voluntarily.” He shut his eyes to stop the room from spinning. “So, how’d Kai win you over finally?”

“Honestly, he had me from the moment we met, but…” Dylan got silent for a moment as she pondered further. “…When it came down to it, I had to figure out on my own that I had something to lose. I had something really, really wonderful to lose. For Lana, maybe that wouldn’t work. She seems like the type who’ll need to see she actually has something really, really wonderful to gain.”

C
hapter 9 Believe

It started with the picture of her he took on the beach.

A picture he thought was too beautiful to stay on his camera. So, he approached one of the artists on the Venice Beach Boardwalk after surfing one day with a proposition to sketch and paint it for payment. He wanted to give it to her. And then an idea blossomed. Lana understood books, pictures, drawings and paintings, because art was the language she spoke most fluently. It was the language through which she could be reached. So, he pored over some of his favorite books and even enlisted, Dylan and Odette, “the (pretty much) marrieds,” looking for a way to speak
love
to her through art and literature.

Eventually, he chose five stories, each of which the artist would depict in separate drawings and he would send them to her with the books. He had never considered himself a romantic, and Wes had never
wooed
a woman before, but he decided if he was going to do it, he was going to go all out. It was the only way he knew how to do anything, anyway.

Five drawings. Five drawings and then he would give up like he’d told Dylan, if Lana didn’t respond to him. And so far, she hadn’t returned a single text, so he wasn’t getting his hopes up. If she didn’t send the first drawing back, he’d continue until he reached his self-imposed time limit.

He mailed a drawing of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy from
Pride and Prejudice
first. The perfect story of how two people ended up in a place, in love, so far from where they had started. The next drawing was of Odysseus and Penelope, from
The Odyssey
, where Penelope waited for the love of her life to return for twenty years, the ultimate story of sacrifice and taking the chance that he would return to her. He sent the third drawing, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester from
Jane Eyre
because he had always admired Jane’s unwillingness to accept a life as Rochester’s mistress after finding out he was still married. He loved plucky women, like Lana, even if she was breaking his heart right now.
Orpheus and Eurydice were in the last drawing he mailed, and definitely the most tragic, but it felt like the most poignant for Wes’ feelings. As the myth went, Orpheus missed his wife so much after her death that he ventured to the Underworld to beg Hades to let her return to the natural world. Hades agreed, though, with a caveat that Orpheus not look back at her as she was trailing him until they were above ground. Orpheus looked anyway. He wanted her so badly; he was willing to risk breaking the rules, willing to take the chance, regardless of what might happen. The last drawing, the one of her, was contingent on how receptive she was to the others. Its unveiling was dependent on her now.

It pained him to be ignored—still no retreating beneath the covers in his dark room—but she didn’t send any of the drawings back. Not one.
But maybe she’s not even looking at them,
he thought each day when his phone had no acknowledgement from her. The weather sucked in L.A., one of those random rainy times that made everyone in the city freak out, so he, Abel and Christian made an impromptu trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for several days with a bunch of their filming buddies. He passed the days with training and surfing, keeping a schedule that was as busy as possible, staying in the water as much as possible, pushing himself harder each day, so that he would be so exhausted, he would fall asleep instantly and not stay awake mentally toiling over her.

He laughed at his friends’ jokes, he drank at the bars, he flirted with fellow tourists at their hotel, but none of it could drown out the anguish and uncertainty that was so settled in his core. And all he could do was push his body so the pain on the outside could be bad enough to forget the one on the inside. After a week of doing that, he was drained on the drive home from the airport and passed out in the backseat.

A hand collided with the side of his face, jolting him awake. “Bro!” He took another hard hit to his jaw. Several actually, before he managed to swing back from his supine position.

“Fuck, Christian…seriously?”

“Wake up! Trust me, you’re gonna wanna be awake right now.”

A heavy downpour was encasing the car and they had slowed, and through the nearly opaque windows he made out the neighborhood; they were a few houses down from home. Wes’ eyes widened suddenly.
Lana. Lana!
Her bike was parked out front. She was sitting on the stoop, knees against her chest, drenched and making no attempt to shield herself from the rain.

Unanticipated anger coursed through him, though he stared at her like she was some long sought relic. Wes swung the door open even though the car was still rolling very slowly, and he jumped out and nearly lost his balance when his feet hit the ground.

“Whoa, Wesley! Dude, calm your tits,” Abel said, jerking the car to a full stop. To Christian, he said, “My brother is fucking insane. My side of the egg must’ve been the one where all the sense was.”

“Stay out here for a few,” he shouted back to them before walking up to her. “Oh, now you show up? Now, you show up?!” Wes fumbled with his keys as he swung the front door open, and she stomped inside after him just as Abel and Christian pulled away.

“
You
are so goddamn infuriating, Wes Elliott. We had a
nice, simple
thing—” Her voice went dead as her gaze floated up the wall to the painting of her: windblown brown hair trapped between her fingers, legs stretched out in the sand, expression pensive but sweet as she stared out into the ocean like every hope and dream she ever had would be brought on shore in the waves. She stared at it, her hold on her bag loosened, and it flopped to the floor.

The room was scary silent. She was still looking at it, and his heart was racing as he watched her, his exasperation melting away. “It’s the
only
way I knew I could talk to you…and you’d listen, Lana.”

She spun to face him. “This isn’t what we wanted, Wes… This isn’t—”

“It isn’t…but
fuck
what I
wanted
,” Wes said as he took steps toward her. “You know what I want
now
? Everything you have. Everything you are. That’s. What. I. Want. I want the way you look at me. I want the way you touch me. I want to hold you
.
I want to talk to you every day…about books, about nothing. I want to hear you laugh….” His gaze pulled down her wet clothing, his eyes catching how her skin was almost visible through her drenched top. He pressed her hips against the wall behind her, felt her hands settle on top of his as she bit her lip. Desire so potent it seemed to slow time and heighten his senses as he took her in, poured into his blood. “I want the way we
kiss and fuck
like the world will end if we don’t. I want to tell you I love you,
‘cause I do
…I love you, and I want you to tell me you love me…or you don’t love me.” Wes narrowed his eyes on her. “Tell me you don’t love me, Lan. Say it,” he demanded. “Say you don’t love me. Just say it and walk out the door.”

Lana’s eyes narrowed, too, in momentary defiance that cut through her own look of passion. “We weren’t supposed to get here...” She pushed him away from her. “…And you started talking about me being fucking perfect. Fucking perfect
for you
and—”

                            “Say you don’t love me.”

Wes caged her back against the wall, leaned in closer than he had been before, and saw her lips trembling from his nearness, felt the press of her nails in his arms. He brought his lips down hard against hers before she could even take the breath necessary to respond. Lana reciprocated the kiss, matching the intensity he’d started. She gripped the back of his damp neck with one hand and fisted his shirt with the other, drawing him against her. Wes suddenly pulled back, leaving her lips puckered and eyes closed.

When she opened them, he leaned in again, just letting his lips graze hers without any pressure. “If you say it, know that I won’t believe you,” he said as he stepped back and gestured for her to exit the home. “You can go, but I don’t fuckin’ believe you, Lana!” he yelled as she slammed the door behind her.

It took a moment for everything that had transpired in the few minutes to register.
She left. Holy shit.
But she hadn’t
just
left, she’d crushed him under her shoe on her way out. Wes moved to the couch, stunned, and sat with his head in his hands. He had taken the leap, gone down the rabbit hole (again) and it was over. The good thing they had was destroyed. The good thing they could’ve had was ruined. Wes looked around the dark house, listened to the rain pick up, and reluctantly dragged his eyes to her portrait, the only face he’d been able to see for weeks. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

The emotions he’d been stifling for weeks roared up to the surface and he choked on them. His throat tightened, heat flared at the top of his esophagus and his eyes stung. He wasn’t a crier though, so he just had to wait for the feeling to subside. He stood and pulled his wet t-shirt over his head.
Shower. Bed. Nothing else.
But a thought suddenly pulsed through his mind as he tossed the shirt to the floor. He hadn’t heard her bike pull off.

She’s still out there. She’s still here.
Wes dashed for the front door and swung it open to find her leaning on his SUV. Soaked, so much so that her jeans were several shades darker, her t-shirt was completely see-through, and her eyes were red. His heart jumped so high, he was sure he had actually tasted it.
She’s still here. She’s still here.

“Lana?” Wes screamed, shivering from the cold rain coating his exposed skin. He was mad. He was happy. He was relieved. He was upset. He was feeling so much at once, he went numb.

“You’re the one who’s beautiful enough to be painted a million times, Wes,” she shouted back. “When I see that stupid smirk of yours, I want to kiss it off your face. I love when you read to me. I love when we argue about books. I love how you always want to make me laugh. I love the way you hold me. I love the way you protect me. I love how you kiss me. I love the way we fuck like we’re each other’s oxygen and…goddammit, I love the way your eyes look when you’re going down on me, like it’s the best thing in the fucking world. I do.”

He laughed with apprehension at first but then it became more genuine. “What is
wrong
with you? Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with you?” he whispered.

“Everything. You.
Every fucking thing about you, Wes.
And that scares me.” She put her face in her hands when her voice broke and fell against his chest when he pulled her into his arms. “You’re the first thing ever in my entire life that has scared me. I’m not used to fear, Wes. It’s unnerving, it’s thrilling, and I don’t know which way is up or down most of the time. And I’ve been so scared that you might be using me to
save
Erin or something—”

“No! Of course not!” he said, shaking his head furiously.

“Yeah…yeah…I get that now. You just accept me as is. You don’t expect me to be someone different. And as much as I don’t need you to do that and as much as I love that you do anyway, it terrifies me. None of the others have been like you. I keep a lot of things in my life temporary and noncommittal because it makes it easier to leave them, and if something’s temporary there’s no temptation to depend on it because you know it’s going to end. There are no dashed hopes, there’s no disappointment and no rejection. And I like that. As unstable as that sounds, it gives me a lot of control. What if I let go, feel what I feel, and you change your mind? What if I give in and you want to go back to before? What if you want how we were?” When she looked up, she made a futile attempt to brush the drops from the torrential downpour off his face. It was falling so hard and so fast, he had to squint. “It’s not that I’m so afraid of falling in love and getting my heartbroken, Wes; I’m afraid of falling in love and getting my heart broken by
you
.”

“I’m scared, too, Lana. But there’s no more before for me, baby; there is no before. We’re free falling, remember?” he said with a kiss to her forehead. “I jumped. No parachute. No safety net. Come with me. Close your eyes and just jump.
Just jump.
”

“God, you make me feel…feel crazy…I don't feel like myself when you touch me—”

“Lana—” he began, but she interrupted him with a kiss, and his brain shut down. It only registered the feeling of wanting this to never end. He lifted her against the back passenger door of his SUV and she curled her legs around his waist, and her hands slid around his bare back.

“I don’t feel like myself when I’m with you…I feel like more. I feel…
more,
” she said breathlessly when she pulled back. “I feel so much more.”

“Then that's where we start, baby.
The more
. We start with the more, okay? More is where we go from here…” He paused before connecting their lips once more, watching her expression turn to impatience. “So you love me?” he asked with a half-smile.

She took in a deep breath. “Of course, I love you. I love you so much, surfer boy. I love you and your stupid smirk, and your tattoos that’ll keep you from proper employment. I am hopelessly in love with you, Wesley Elliott.”