Some Boy (What's Love? #1) (21 page)

“I want to help,” I murmured. “I care about you, Brendan. There’s got to be something I can do.”

I felt him sigh, and he dropped his head down, resting his cheek against the top of my head. I wanted to look up at him but he was holding me tightly. “You already have. No-one has cared about me like you have before.” He said it heavily, and my chest felt tight. “That’s why I wanted to tell you—so that no matter what happens, you’ll know.”

“Know what? What do you mean?”

“That none of this was because of you. Or because I didn’t care.” His voice was thick and quiet. I just waited, my whole body taught like a wound spring. “I’ve got an older sister too, you know. But she takes after my dad. So she took off tonight and left me to deal with it.” He took a couple of breaths, like it was hard to get air into his lungs. “My family always goes mad when it snows.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“Because of…because of how Mum died.”

His mum was dead? I felt the shock of that ripple through me like an earthquake, and I felt sick. Why had he not told me that before? I tried to move but he held me fast. I slipped my arms around his waist and clung to him too, then, with nothing to say.

“That was the last time I remember feeling like a family, that ski trip. Mum had been saving for it for years. It was the only holiday we ever went on, and it killed her. Or my dad did, so the lawyers tell us. Not the car. Not the fucking car.”

My mind was whirling. I was trying to piece together what he was saying to understand it, but I felt hot and cold at once. His dislike of lawyers was starting to make sense. I, more than most, knew how good they could be at legally kicking you while you were down. I didn’t know what had happened in Brendan’s case, but it was plain how he felt about it, and that was all I cared about.

“I haven’t seen my brothers since they were taken away. They’ll be seven now. I haven’t seen them in three years. I could get them back now if I wasn’t such a fuck up. And if I wasn’t trying to pay off Dad’s fucking debts.”

I felt hot tears slipping down my face and blinked them away.
Don’t cry now. This is not about you, Kat.
I tried to grit my teeth, but they just chattered. I was shaking.

“I’m sorry, Brendan. I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else I could possibly say. He sighed harshly and sat up a little straighter.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. This is my life to sort out. I just… I just wanted you to know.” His grip on me had slackened, and I lifted my head out of the warm darkness against his chest, blinking at him blearily.

“I’m here for you. I don’t know what I can do, but — I’m here.” I love you. I wanted to say it out loud. I felt the force of it in my chest, creeping up my throat, wanting to blurt itself out into the space between us. But I swallowed it back. It wasn’t the time. I didn’t want him to think I was saying it out of twisted pity. And I didn’t want it to drive him away when he’d just opened up more than he ever had before.

He smiled at me with a humourless laugh, and rubbed and hand over his face. Then he winced and cursed, when he knocked the split on his lip. “You can do something for me — you can show me this surprise. Get it over with.” I tried to keep my face straight, to not look stung, but I must have failed. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like that…I just—”

“—hate surprises. Sorry — I just wanted to do something romantic. It’s stupid.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said and grinned. How did he do that? Push everything aside so quickly and make jokes? I frowned at him even as I was smiling. “So, what are we doing then?”

“Star gazing.”

He screwed up his face, then winced and I saw his tongue flick to the split in his lip. He looked to the window. “Uh, have you seen the weather?”

“Trust me. I mean, if you still want to do this…we don’t—”

“I want to, Kat.”
 

“Should we have tea first? I was going to cook — are you hungry?” I got to my feet, looking down at him. We’d gone to all the effort of getting Damien to agree to giving up a jar of pasta sauce. I may as well use it.

“Yeah. I’m starved actually,” he said, and took my out stretched hand to stand up. “Wait, you can cook?” he said. I shot him a look, but then grimaced.

“That remains to be seen,” I said. He laughed and let me lead him to the kitchen.

*-*-*

“Close your eyes,” I told him. We were standing outside Izzy’s door in the hallway, stomachs full of spaghetti bolognese — which had turned out surprisingly well, so I was a little too full for my liking. But it made me feel pleasantly warm and heavy and looking at Brendan made me long to just crawl into his arms. We hadn’t even had much of the wine and dessert either, deciding to come straight here. Brendan was still mildly anxious about it all. “Close them!”
 

His eyebrows dipped dubiously, but he complied and put one hand over his face. Then he splayed his fingers and peeked through them just as I put my hand on the door handle. I scowled.

He closed the gap again. “Fine, but—”

“Just trust me, okay?” I twined my fingers through his and squeezed. He sighed.

“I trust you.” I could tell it took a lot of effort to say it. My stomach was doing flips. This had just been a light-hearted date, until he showed up with a split lip and family tragedy. Now everything seemed more intense, and I was doubting my plan. I hoped it wouldn’t seem flippant and silly in the face of everything.
 

But I opened the door and led him through, and he let me. He even kept his eyes shut as I led him up the narrow staircase to the loft space in Izzy’s room that formed a tiny mezzanine over the bed. He stepped hesitantly and with a few complaints, like he suspected I was about to lead him off the edge of a building, but he did it. And I got him to lay down on the little nest of duvets and pillows I’d created. I switched off the light, then dropped down beside him, still holding his hand, and settled in close, on our backs with our faces to the ceiling. I glanced at him and took a breath, then bit my lip.

“Okay,” I murmured. And he took his hand away. He blinked a few times, adjusting from the blackness. But the light in the room was off and it didn’t take long. Then he grinned and looked at me where I lay, my head turned to watch his reaction. “See, star gazing,” I said nervously, trying to smile when he said nothing. He looked back up at the ceiling, dotted with all thirty-five of the plastic glow in the dark stars I’d bought at Poundstretcher.

“You even made constellations,” he said, his mouth quirked into a lopsided grin as he looked at them.

“I tried.” Even in the loft space, I’d only just been able to reach the high ceiling, and my constellations were certainly not astronomically to scale.

“Is that the Southern Cross?” he said, his forehead puckering.

“Uh, yeah. I think the website I was looking at was from Australia, so I’ve taken us to the Southern Hemisphere tonight. Plus it was easiest to make.” I shrugged. Then waited. He looked at the faux night sky a bit longer then turned his face back to me.

“I love it,” he murmured, and my heart thudded. “This is the most romantic shit anyone’s ever done for me. Not that it’s a long list. But still.”

I laughed and rolled onto my side to get closer to him, glad he was easy to impress, because romantic shit was not my forte. I
 
kissed him gently on the uninjured side of his mouth. He smelled warm and spicy, and I nuzzled closer. He tried to turn fully into the kiss, but grunted when he tried to move his lips.

“Don’t try,” I murmured, shifting my face so that my nose was tucked against his and our foreheads touched.

“I want you so bad,” he whispered close to my mouth, and his fingers found my hip as he turned into me, pulling me against him. He was already hard. And I was trembling with longing and need. “My tongue still works,” he murmured, demonstrating by running it over my lower lip. I grinned, but I could tell the movement still hurt him, so I pushed him back and trailed kisses across his jaw line and down his neck.

And in the darkness and the dim, greenish glow of fake starlight, we stripped each other bare and ran our hands over each other’s bodies, tangled together like there was no ending or beginning to either of us, like we were melded together. He made up for the lack of use of his mouth with his fingers and palms caressing my body, grazing over my hips, my breasts, stroking my nipples; then he slid his hand down between us and pulsed his thumb against me. I gasped when two fingers slipped inside me, and I hooked my leg over his to hold myself closer to him.
 

My hand found his throbbing hardness and I guided him to me, pushing his hand away from me; I was so close to bursting, but I wanted him inside me more than anything. He hovered just inside me for a moment, teasing, as I buried my face in his neck and bit his skin. He groaned and drove into me; my fingers raked his back and I cried out harshly as we moved together.

He tipped me fully onto my back and rose over me, holding himself up above me and watching my face as he pressed his hips forward and thrust deeper, again and again, until I was writhing with a long, slow orgasm that flooded from somewhere deep inside me and quivered and pulsed through my whole body. He grunted with shuddering breaths as his hips jerked harder against me, and he flooded into me, all the while staring into my eyes with an intensity that was hotter, even, than the force of coming.

Then he dropped down, covering me, as we shivered with aftershocks, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him. Despite the pain, his mouth found mind and he kissed me deeply. I tasted the slight metallic tang of blood, mingled with the musky heat of his breath and tongue, and I spasmed around him, drawing another groan. I felt like I had taken him in, body and soul, and my chest hurt with it.

“I love you,” I murmured, before I could stop myself. And then I shut my eyes tightly and waited, horribly regretful and hopeful at the same time. The air felt so thick I couldn’t breathe it in, and I was lightheaded. Brendan hadn’t moved. His face was in in the hollow of my neck again, and he just breathed there. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said it—”

“Don’t be sorry,” he murmured. But he didn’t say anything else.
 

“You don’t have to say anything,” I said. A redundant statement, since he clearly
wasn’t
speaking. “I don’t expect anything.”

He finally shifted, lifting off of me, and lying down beside me on his back, looking up at the dying stars. Stupid, cheap things that couldn’t even hold their glow.

“I really care about you, Kat,” he said quietly, not looking at me. I glanced at him, then stared up at the ceiling too, trying to breathe quietly. “I just—”

“Don’t feel it yet, it’s okay.”

“I didn’t say that.” I glanced at him again, but couldn’t stay looking at him. His forehead was creased. I stared at the ceiling, feeling hot with embarrassment. Why had I blurted it out? I was an idiot. I knew it wasn’t the right time. “It’s not that I don’t — I just can’t.”

“Okay,” I said, like that made sense. I didn’t understand, but I didn’t feel like hashing it out either. I just wanted to forget it had ever happened.

“Kat.” I could tell he was looking at me now, but the muscles in my neck felt tight, like I wouldn’t be able to turn my head and look at him even if I wanted to. And then something beeped from somewhere nearby. Brendan sighed and sat up to reach for it, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his jeans, crumpled near our feet.

“I did without a phone for so long, and now that I have it, they never leave me alone.”

“They?” I murmured, still lying where I was, pulling the edge of the duvet I lay on across myself self-consciously.

“My sisters. Always wanting something…” His voice died away. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.” He was getting to his feet, searching for his clothes, pulling his underwear and his jeans on before I’d even moved.

“Are you leaving?” I asked, then grimaced at how petulant and self-involved it sounded. “What’s happened?”

“Becca’s in the hospital,” he said. “My younger sister.”

“What?” I sat up abruptly. “Oh my God. What happened?”

“I don’t know. It can’t be that bad — she’s messaging me herself. But I’d better go.”

“I’m coming.”

“No, you don’t have to—”

“I want to. Plus, I’ve got a car.”

I stood up beside him, pulling on my trackies, and I glared at him defiantly when he looked at me. He shook his head, but smiled. And then he took my face between his hands and kissed me, lightly, without really moving his lips. We rested there for a moment, breathing against each other. I still felt sick with weird swirling feelings that I couldn’t put into words, but when he touched me and held me like that I was foolish enough to believe it was going to be okay.
 

And besides, he had bigger issues on his mind than things I blurted in the heat of the moment. I’d told him I’d be there for him, and I would be, no matter what.

And so I grabbed my coat and handbag and my car keys. I was disheveled, had no bra, and was still sticky between my legs, but I didn’t care, because when I looked at Brendan and saw the pain there like a lead weight on his shoulders, nothing else mattered to me, except doing anything I could for him, like he had done for me.

He was tense and silent in the car, and always staring stonily out the windscreen whenever I glanced at him — though I kept my eyes on the road most of the time, trying to concentrate and peer through the lashing rain; the wipers were no match for the weather. At least it hadn’t snowed much. Everything was slushy and the roads were half flooded, but there was no slick ice.

But when I reached over and put my hand on his leg and squeezed, like he had done for me the last time we had been in a car together when the situation was reversed, he looked at me and his eyes softened.

And with a pang, I understood it then, why he had taken someone else’s car to drive me to the hospital when I’d thought my mum might be dying. Because he knew how it felt. My heart squeezed. I didn’t know if I would have done the same, ‘borrowed’ a car — probably not back then. But now, maybe I would have. Because I knew that what I felt wasn’t just the heat of the moment. I felt it deeply in every part of my body. And to look after him, I probably would do
anything.