The Singles (76 page)

“That was—” He releases a breath, breaking the silence. “God, girl, you’re amazing.” I smile to myself and drag my feet back and forth over the rumpled sheets until he stills me by trapping my legs between his. “Did you hear me? You. Are. Amazing.”

“Oh,
yeah
? So are you.” His hand finds my hip, and he turns me toward him, rubbing his lips over the tip of my nose. “And just think,” I whisper, “we could’ve been amazing each other all along.”

He throws his head back and laughs, giving me the chance to push my lips to the rough column of his throat as I skim my nails over the muscles of his chest. He catches my wrist with his hand. Holding me close to him, he lowers his chin until his sea blue eyes are staring right into mine. “We should have.”

For a long time after that, we’re quiet until the sound of his phone vibrating on the nightstand pulls us out of the daze. Leaning over me, he grabs it and touches his finger to his lips for me to keep quiet.

“Hey, beautiful,” he answers with a smile, and I feel my own expression of pure satisfaction fade into a frown. At first I feel a surge of panic, and anger, but then I can clearly hear an enthusiastic child’s voice on the other end, and I relax against the pillows. “My niece,” he mouths.

Not wanting to sit in on a private conversation with his family, I climb off the bed and pad out of his room in search of the bathroom. I’d been too preoccupied on the way in, but I find it relatively quickly—a couple doors down from his bedroom. Grabbing a washcloth from the neat stack piled up on the storage rack, I clean up carefully, wincing at how sore and tender my flesh is when my fingers touch it.

“Rhys Delane,” I whisper softly, glancing back in the direction of his bedroom, “you are most definitely incredible.”

Dropping the cloth in the brown wicker hamper by the door that’s halfway full of used linens, I examine myself closely in the mirror. I trace my finger around my kiss-swollen lips. Glide my knuckles across my hot, flushed skin. And finally, I touch my hair, which is framing my face in messy waves. I start to run my fingers through it to give it some order, but then I decide against it. When I return to the bedroom, he’s off the phone and is sitting up in the bed.

He’s gotten rid of the condom, but he’s still stark naked with no sheets or bedspreads covering him—which, of course, I don’t mind at all.

He holds out a muscular arm to me, beckoning me to him. “Come here,” he says and drags me onto his lap to straddle him when I comply. “Sorry about that. She always calls before bedtime, and—”

I had forgotten just how early in the evening it still is, which only manages to make me crazy with anticipation. God, what’s he done to me? “Don’t say sorry.” I press my lips to his, but pull back when he hesitates to respond. I bite the inside of my cheek, studying his face carefully, before I finally ask, “What’s wrong?”

The corners of his lips twist into a tight smile. “Just family bullshit. It never ends.”

He told me once before that his mother and niece were the only family he has left, so I shift one of my eyebrows in concern. “Everything alright?” At first, he’s reluctant to say anything, but at my urging he pulls me closer and lets out a frustrated breath against my chest.

“I talked to my mom for a couple minutes. My niece’s mother is trying for custody again,” he explains, rubbing his hands up and down my bare arms. I shiver and mold against him. “She lost custody of Stacey a few months after my brother went to prison. Then she married a mean ass drunk—and she’s not much better herself—so there’s no fucking way I’m letting that happen.”

“Oh,” I whisper, tilting away from him and hoping he doesn’t see how rigid my body has gone.
No
.
No
.
NO
. Suddenly, I regret asking him to tell me what was bothering him because I absolutely do not want to discuss his brother right after what we just shared.

He only takes my silence as an invitation to continue baring his soul to me. “My brother Owen was a drunk, too.” He touches the tiny scar beneath his right eye, feathering his fingers over it. “A gift, after we got into a fight right after Stacey was born. He tried to take off with her in the car after downing a bottle of Jim Beam.”

Oh God. “Rhys, I—”

“And then, he ended up going to prison for running some poor kid down a couple years ago and leaving her for dead,” he tells me brokenly, and I feel my head start to shake from side to side. “My niece’s mother is the same way, and she thinks she can drag Stacey back into that shit.” His jaw clenches in anger, and deep inside of me, I feel that same fury hurtling through me.

Because that poor kid Owen Delane had run down was my sister—older than me by a mere 10 months. What Rhys says next only makes everything worse, makes my heart fall to the pit of my stomach.

“I used to bail him out. I was stupid enough to bail that motherfucker out time and time again because I thought he could change. He didn’t change, which is why I cut him out of my life.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t. Fucking. Breathe. Somehow, though, I manage to blurt out, “What?”

“He’d get picked up for drunk driving, and I’d scrimp together whatever I had to get his ass out. The week before—” he starts, but I can’t hear any more of this, and I cover his lips with my fingers. “Jesus,” he growls and rubs his hand over his face. “What the hell am I doing? I’m ruining this for you, Evelyn, and I’m so sorry—”

But I’m already stumbling off of him, shaking my head. “This can’t happen again,” I say, my voice anything but confident, my breathing anything but calm. Calm and confident flew out the window the second Rhys pulled me through that door earlier and into his arms. I swing my legs over the side of his bed and slide my feet around on the thin carpet in search of my boots. “This will
never
happen again.”

Ugh, where the hell are those shoes?

“Is it because I’m letting you in?” he demands angrily, coming up off the bed after me. “Letting you into my world?”

Oh Rhys, you don’t even know the half of it.

“I just—” I struggle to find the right word, and then I drag my hands through my hair and release a sob from the back of my throat. “I’m sorry, Rhys. I’m so sorry.”

“I hear you.” He flicks on the dim lamp, and I finally spot the bright red toe of one of my boots poking out from beneath the bed. I can feel his gaze—full of heat and anger and pain—tracing my every movement as I finish getting dressed. My face is on fire, and to my mortification, so is my body.

The same body that, not even a half an hour ago, Rhys had laid claim to.

I need to reestablish those invisible boundaries I should have placed between us the moment I realized who he was. But first, and this is so damn important, I need to get the hell out of Rhys’ apartment. My sanity depends on it.

As I jerk my second boot on and stumble to his bedroom door, Rhys’ voice pours over me. “Before you go ... I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I didn’t let you know I’m holding your panties.”

My words are clipped and low as I stalk over to his bed. “We shouldn’t do—”

“In case you haven’t figured it out, I don’t care about what we should or shouldn’t be doing anymore,” he says, and for a moment, I want to tell him everything so he’ll understand. Instead, I hold my hand out. To my surprise, he immediately drops my panties in my open palm. Then he looks me square in the eye and says, “Stay the night.”

This is so wrong. So wrong. I came here to escape from my reality tonight, and this is where I am: diving face down in it. As I shake my head, my hair falls over my eyes.

“I’ll call you later,” I mutter.

Once again, he stops me just before I can open the door, his voice low and taunting when he says, “Guess you called it right, Evelyn.”

Even though I know it’s exactly what he wants, I flash him a look over my shoulder. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his forearms on his thighs, his bare, muscular shoulders relaxed and one of his eyebrows arched high as he regards me carefully.

God, he looks so ridiculously sexy.

And forbidden.

“Excuse me?” I demand.

“First day I sat in on Cameron’s Sight Singing & Dictation course and we were introducing ourselves. When I asked about you, you looked at me and said, ‘I wreck things’. That’s what you’re doing right now, isn’t it?”

Shaking my head, I release a harsh laugh. “There’s nothing between us to wreck, Rhys.”

But there is.

There is so much, and he knows it.

He must realize what I’m thinking because there’s a look of accomplishment in his sea blue eyes that drives me crazy and makes me want to slap him.  “Maybe.” The corners of his mouth twitch into a beautiful, sardonic grin that rips me to shreds. “Still doesn’t change the fact that you came here tonight,” he muses aloud.

He’s tearing me apart here, and I cover my face with my hands. “What do you want from me?” I moan into my palms, and his reply is simple.

“More of you.”

My lips part slightly, but I stop myself before I say something I’ll regret. I pull in a short breath that sets my throat on fire. Finally, I meet those unnerving blue-green eyes, and everything else fades, no breathing, no sound of the rain outside his window—nothing exists when he’s looking at me like I owe him something.

And then, I realize something: I will lose with Rhys Delane.

I will lose my head, my heart. He’s changed everything, and I don’t know how or why or when I let this happen.

Rhys wants to take things from me that I absolutely can’t give him.

“You’ve already slept with me.” My voice is purposely void of any emotion, and although his face remains calm, I know I’ve managed to cut him. It’s obvious by how quickly his stare turns frigid. “You have enough.”

And he does. Because now that I think about it—and even though he’s yet to realize it—I’ve already lost with Rhys Delane. It just took me this long to figure that out.

“Come back to bed. Come back to me,” he implores softly, his touch even gentler when he comes across the room to pull me to him. I don’t fight him. I can’t. Because it goes back to that thing about everything changing with sex—now that I realize I’m lost, I don’t even stand a chance.

And because in some messed up, awful way, Rhys and I need each other—we’re both stuck in a repetitive loop, blaming ourselves for things we no longer have the power to change.

Two Years Ago

––––––––

E
ver since the bus dropped me off two hours ago, I’ve been telling myself that in just five more minutes I’m going to start my trig homework. Instead, I spent an hour of that time screwing off on Facebook, another thirty minutes making two new playlists, and then the other half hour on the phone with my friend Sophie. At this point, I’m about 99.9 percent sure no productivity will be happening on the school front tonight, so I shove my textbook and untouched worksheet back inside my backpack and drop the bag in my closet.

“Everlasting Light,” the ringtone I’ve assigned to my boyfriend James starts playing, and I answer with a wide grin. “You in Kingsport yet?” He was supposed to be riding to a nearby town to look at a car this afternoon, and I didn’t expect to hear from him until late tonight.

“Change of plans,” he informs me, and I raise my eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. “Can you distract your mom long enough for me to come in through the basement?”

Grinning, I let out an excited shriek, and I’m already nodding before I say, “When will you be here?”

“Give me fifteen?”

“Alright, I’m going downstairs right now,” I promise. As soon as I hang up, I check my hair in the mirror hanging over my dresser, dousing the unruly locks with frizz tamer. The sound of my phone going off again stops me before I can put my hair into a ponytail holder, and I press my lips into a tight line as I listen to OneRepublic’s “All the Right Moves”—the ringtone I’ve set for my sister.

What the hell does she want?

I almost don’t answer her call, but then I release an irritated sigh, sink down in my computer chair, and hit
Accept.

“What?” I answer sharply. I can barely hear what she’s saying because the only noise coming from the other end is that of wind, and I jab my tongue in my cheek. “Can you not call me when you’re out running? Speaking of which, why
are
you still running? Isn’t your meet already over?”

The fussy noise slowly fades away, and then I hear Lily breathing heavily. “I’m not running, I’m walking,” she explains. “Hey, can you do me a favor and come get me? I was supposed to get a ride home with Meredith, but she didn’t show up to school today.” My sister’s own car had been in the body shop at my dad’s dealership for the last couple days, and she’s been relying on rides from her friends to get home.

“I’m grounded from my car, remember?” I tell her dryly. “So unless you want me to borrow Mom’s bike to come get you, I think you’re screwed.” Of course, we both know very well that our mom would gladly hand my keys over when it comes to Lily.

In Mom’s eyes, Lily can do no wrong.

“Don’t be like that, Evie,” my sister says gently, and I feel a pang of guilt for being so rude to her. “I didn’t mean to tell her. It just ... happened.”

Biting the inside of my cheek, I check the time on my alarm clock. “You know, I wouldn’t have sold you out.” Closing my laptop and getting up, I shrug. “But it is what it is. Should I tell Mom to come pick you up? Or better yet, why don’t you just jog since you like running so damn much?”

She seems to think on both of my suggestions for a second before dragging in a deep breath. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll just walk—it’s not that far.”

“Exactly,” I say, “you’ll be fine.”

Lily laughs softly, and I can imagine she’s shaking her head right now. “I love you, beautiful sister. Even if you are being a baby right now. I’ll talk to you tonight, okay?”

Whatever. Rolling my eyes, I hang up. Then I leave my phone face down on my desk to go downstairs and distract my mother while James sneaks in.

Now

––––––––

T
he second “anniversary” of my sister’s death comes almost too quietly, and I leave Rhys’ apartment as soon as the first strains of light peek through his bedroom window. Although I know I’ll probably spend the majority of my fall break with him, this is the only day that I reserve exclusively for myself. He’s grieving too—I saw that much in his eyes last night as he held me close to him. Still, I can’t quite trust myself to be with him today when the only thing I’ll be able to think about is Lily.