The Singles (47 page)

He’s already found what he needs in the form of my damp panties. A self-assured smile builds on his face. “Because of that. Because no matter how pissed you are right now, your pussy still wants me.”

I grip his wrist and tear his hand out of my jeans, trembling when his fingertips drag over my clit in the process. Wyatt thinks he has me figured out. He thinks that just because my body responds to him, I’ll fall into his bed tonight, and I’ll get over him being a dick.

This time, when I step around him, he doesn’t stop me because he’s certain I’m ready to go back to his hotel room. He’s certain we’ll end the night with angry sex and start the morning with it, too.

So, it must be a shock to his system when I say, “Have a wonderful night, McCrae. Let’s try this again in the morning when you’re not planning on taking your frustrations out on my girlie bits.”

***

W
hen I let myself into my empty hotel room half an hour later, I tumble into bed, and it’s a shame that my thoughts are still focused on the way his hands felt. Unable to sleep, I take a shower, standing beneath the steady stream of piping hot water until my skin starts to burn.

“Get out of my head, McCrae,” I complain aloud as I dress and get back into bed.

Of course, he doesn’t. And this time, when thoughts of Wyatt assault my mind, I stupidly allow my brain to take things a step further. I think back to the night he showed up at my hotel door—the first time, right after he confronted me about my cutting in the back of Sinjin’s Expedition. When I close my eyes, and let myself be dragged into the memory, I can almost hear Wyatt’s knock on my hotel door—that night is still
that
vivid in my head.

“Who is it?” I ask, getting up off the creaky hotel bed. On my way to the door I stop and turn down the volume on the CD player, which is blasting Chevelle. I look out the peephole, expecting my brother to be there. It’s not him. Instead, Wyatt McCrae is outside my door, his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. I draw back in surprise. A few seconds later, when he knocks again, I finally find my voice. “Wyatt? Are you—is everything alright?”

His lips move into a grin, and I lean my shoulder against the door as I watch him. Wyatt McCrae is breathtaking. I’ve always known he was gorgeous—I mean, it’s obvious—but suddenly, it’s impossible for me to simply look the other way.

“You worry too much. Everything’s fine,” he promises. Twisting his lips to the side, he leans closer to the door, like he’s trying to see what I’m doing through the other side of the peephole. “You gonna let me in the damn room, Kylie, or do I have to beg you?”

I throw the door open without thinking, not stopping to care that my long black hair looks messy, or that I’m not wearing a bra beneath my Yellowcard tee shirt. Not that it matters. I don’t exactly have very much going on in the boob department.

“What the fuck are you listening to?” he asks as he comes inside. He shuts the door behind him before turning to me and making a face. “You bailed on dinner with me to hole up in here and listen to Chevelle? You sure know how to stomp on my ego, don’t you?”

He’s just teasing me, right? When he called my room nearly three hours ago, I declined going to dinner with him and the rest of the band because my thoughts were still reeling from our talk earlier this afternoon.

“Is there something you need from me?” I blurt out, lifting my gaze up to his, letting myself be pulled in by his stunning blue eyes.

His expression is unreadable for several seconds, but then he shakes his head. “I don’t always need something from you, beautiful. I just wanted to check up on you. Make sure you’re alright.” 

Beautiful. He’s calling me beautiful.

Dear God.

I turn my back for just a moment in order to catch my breath before facing him once again. Sitting on the edge of the hotel bed, I bring my knees up to my chin and pretend like his eyes don’t follow my every move. “I wasn’t hungry when you called. And I was reading,” I finally say.

“You’ve gotta eat, Kylie.” He rocks back on the balls of his feet and then leans against the desk on the other side of the room. “So, I came by to walk you to—” But then his eyes land on the balled up fast food bag in the wastebasket by the door, and to the drink sitting on the nightstand, and he shrugs his shoulders. I can’t help but notice the sudden look of disappointment on his face. “And you’ve already gone by yourself.”

“Sorry.” And I am. I would have never walked across the street to grab something from McDonalds if I’d known Wyatt would show up at my door like this. Alone. Even if my brother did more than likely send him to check in on me. “You can tell Lucas that—”

Wyatt quickly interrupts me. “He doesn’t know I’m here.” As my lips form into a silent “Oh,” he winks at me and pushes himself away from the desk. Panic rises in my chest as he walks over to the door. “Alright, beautiful, I’ll see you in the morning when we leave for—.”

Before I can stop to think, I’m on my feet and halfway across the room. “Don’t go, Wyatt. Please just ... stay.”

He drops his hand away from the door handle, and suddenly, he’s in front of me, towering over me before I can process that he’s moved. “You okay?”

“No. I mean, yes. It’s just that ...” How the hell do I tell him I don’t want him to leave because he’s all I’ve thought about since we stopped in Livingston and checked into this hotel. That, I can’t remember a word of the book I’d been reading tonight because my thoughts were solely on him. “You called me beautiful,” I say hoarsely.

“Yeah, you are.”

“Why?”

He offers me a crooked grin. “You’re asking me why you’re beautiful or why I called you that?”

Both. But instead of answering his question, something compels me forward, as close to him as I can possibly be, and I stand on the tips of my toes and lift my mouth. I don’t know what I expect—for him to push me away or for him to kiss me hard and passionately—but he surprises me when he murmurs against my lips, “You’ve fucked with my head this entire trip, Kylie. I feel like a dick for wanting you, for ...”

I close my eyes. “For what?”

“Look, if I kiss you, if we do this, there’s no way I’m walking out that door tonight. I won’t be able to keep myself from touching you. I want you, Kylie. You have to have realized that by now.”

No, I hadn’t.

But then again, I’ve never been good at paying attention to what’s right in front of me. Maybe, I never will be.

I reach up, draping my arms over his toned shoulders and linking my fingers together behind his blonde hair to pull him to me. When our lips meet seconds later, it’s electric—lovely, mind-altering electricity. After he pulls away from me, I open my eyes sluggishly, not wanting to lose the moment I have with him.

“I don’t want you to leave tonight,” I say, my tone confident despite how fast my heart is racing. “And I don’t want you to stop touching me.”

Now, more than eight years later in another hotel room and a different city, those memories are still powerful enough to make my eyes burn. I fist my hands into the sheets and squeeze my eyes tightly together.

“You’ve fucked with my head this entire trip,” I whisper aloud, “so give it a rest, McCrae.”

S
hortly after four thirty the next morning, I hear a key card slide into the lock to my room. I’m still so wired from the night before that I’ve yet to fall asleep. The slight clicking noise on the other side of the door makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Fully alert, I slide myself into a sitting position and grab the first weapon I can find—my boot. After what happened back at the hotel in New Orleans, no one can blame me for being on edge.

My fear quickly dissipates when Heidi creeps into the room, holding her pumps to her chest with one arm, as she eases the door gently shut behind her with the other. She turns around and starts tiptoeing across the floor, but then she freezes as I flick on the lamp between our beds.

“Well, hell, I thought you’d be tied to McCrae’s bed or something right about now.”

I toss the clunky shoe down on the floor. “Surprise, babe.”

She drops her shoes and kicks them, one by one, beneath the desk. “So, why
aren’t
you in McCrae’s bed?” She wrinkles her nose. “Is everything alright?”

Bringing my knees up to my chest, I circle my arms around my shins. I’ve spent the last several hours lying in the dark, my brain pinging between needing Wyatt and wondering whether or not everything will be fine with him until we return to L.A. I’ve yet to come up with a solution to either.

But to Heidi, I tip my head. “We’re good. We have to leave so early that we decided to call it a night.”

She pauses for a few seconds, like she’s about to say something earth-shattering, but then she unzips her strapless top and pulls it off. Rolling my eyes, I glance away from the pierced boobage on display until she clears her throat. When I turn my head back to her, the red silk bustier is draped over the back of the chair, and she’s stretching a tank top down her waist.

“You don’t think I’m stupid enough to believe that, right?” She loops a ponytail holder through her dark hair, which has started to frizz.

I rub my hands up and down my legs. “Not at all, but I think you’re smart enough not to make a big deal out of it.”

“Oh, I am.” She pulls off her jeans and tosses them on top of the red top before she climbs into bed. Adjusting her pillows, she looks up at me from beneath her long lashes. “And before you start making a big deal, no, Cal and I did not sleep together.”

Stretching my legs back down the sheets, I flex my feet and hold up my hands defensively. “I wasn’t even going to bring it up.”

“You were thinking it. We just went to a few more bars.” She grabs the remote from the nightstand, but before she switches on the flat screen TV, she cocks her eyebrow. “You tired?”

With thoughts of Wyatt still strumming their way through my brain? Hardly.

For an hour, Heidi and I sit in complete silence, which is a feat for us, considering we both loathe quiet situations. The only thing she finds worth watching is a rerun of
Game of Thrones
that she’s probably seen no less than ten times. Midway through the episode, she crawls to the bottom of her bed, lies on her stomach, and refuses to look away from the TV, acting as if she hasn’t already witnessed her favorite character’s death.

“I hate this scene,” she whispers. “I’ll never watch this show again.
Never
. It rips out my fucking heart.”

“You said that last year.”

After the end credits play, she turns off the TV and blinks, her head lolling forward a bit. She’s seconds away from passing out. Then, I’ll be up alone, thinking about shit that I shouldn’t, like thoughts that I would have been over by now if I didn’t accept Wyatt’s deal back in New Orleans.

Heidi returns to the top of her bed and stretches out on the pillows. Though her eyes are closed, she turns her head in my direction. “Do you think this is actually it for you and McCrae?”

“Yes,” I say too quickly. The muscles in my face stiffen, but I continue. “Maybe. At some point, we have to stop trying if it’s not going anywhere.” Wyatt and I had reached that point a long time ago, but I didn’t realize it until last year, a couple of weeks after our Thanksgiving Day hookup.

“You said that last year,” Heidi says sleepily, repeating my earlier statement.

Yes, but this year is different.

Although Heidi is probably planning on having a ten-hour sleep marathon, her chances of accomplishing that are cut short when Wyatt shows up to our room a little after nine. He leans against the door frame, his body relaxed, as if we didn’t argue last night.

I match his nonchalance and give him an easy smile that’s the complete opposite of how I’m feeling. “Morning,” I say.

He glimpses over my head and snorts when he eyes Heidi passed out on her bed, curled into a fetal position and breathing heavily. “Did you get my text?”

“Turned off my phone.”

“Avoiding me?”

I lick the corner of my lips. “Dodging drama.”

He curls his hand into the hem of my shirt and inches into the room, closing the space between us in a series of deliberate short steps. The sound of his boots dragging across the carpet is loud enough to mask the deep breaths I’m taking.

“Drama’s not all bad, beautiful.”

Shaking my head, I stare him down. “It is when I end my night wanting to murder you.”

Wyatt’s gaze lowers. His eyes are intense, unblinking, and the apology that I want from him is there, clearly visible behind the turbulent blue depths. I’m just not sure if it’s enough.

“We’re leaving in an hour.” His fingers creep beneath my tee, splaying out on the smooth skin just below my belly button.

I mirror his movements, pressing my palms on the sides of his abs. “I’ll wake Heidi up.”

As he drops his mouth a little closer to mine, his warm breath fans across my face, and I tilt up my chin. “Not yet.” His fingers trace the length of my torso, all the way up to the sensitive spot beneath my breasts, and then they move back down, cupping the wide curves of my hips. “You’re still angry.”

Why does he have to make everything so difficult? Why does he have to tear me down at every turn just to make me want him at the next?
“Of course I am,” I hiss, suddenly out of breath. “You acted like a jealous idiot.”

The muscles in his neck tighten. “And you haven’t?”

I lower my chin, scowling up at him from beneath my lashes, which are still coated in the mascara I used last night. “I’ve never insulted anyone speaking to you in a bar, not even when it was anything
but
innocent.”

He mutters a curse, and just when I expect him to get the verbal apology out of the way so we can be on our way, he surprises me. He picks me up, and he literally hauls me over his shoulder.

“Put me down,” I warn. 

Ignoring me, he moves out of the doorway and uses the toe of his boot to close the door quietly.

“Wyatt, so help me—”

“You’ll what, beautiful? Hit me? Scream?” His pierced lips drag up into a wicked grin. “You know I love it when you do both.”