Vertical Lines (The Vert Series Book 1) (23 page)

He asked me the same thing earlier. I can see how difficult it is for him to hold back, feel how hard he is against me, and still, he thinks of me first.

“Always taking care of the people he cares about,” I think. And now I’m one of them.

“Yes, Brooks. Yes.” I punctuate my words with kisses, dragging my lips over his jaw, down his throat to his shoulder. He shifts me, lifting my hips and settling me on his rigid length, easing me gently down.

There’s pain. I pause and adjust, ignoring the slight burn, the inevitable ache that is a mixture of pleasure and having him again so quickly.

“Jordan,” he says, and I hear it. The worry. His voice is tight, and I can feel him throbbing inside of me, but he’s studying my face as if he can’t bear to watch me hurt.

“More,” I say, rocking my hips just a little. The movement causes friction, and though the slight burn of invasion stings, there’s also something else with it. A deeper ache, a grinding one that has pleasure shooting through my legs and stomach.

Brooklyn’s groan mixes with mine. Eyes on him, I rock again, breath catching in my throat when he closes his eyes and grips my hips. I follow the rhythm he sets, lifting and sitting, rocking, forward and back. He leans back slightly, his stomach muscles contracting, and I reach down from his shoulders to place my hands on those defined muscles.

“God, yes,” he says. I hold myself steady, palms flat against his stomach, and I rock and rock, my body instinctually seeking the pleasure his rhythm has introduced, climbing higher and higher until I can barely breathe.

Different than the last time. We had each other only a few hours ago, yet, this orgasm is stealing my breath, the feelings so large I almost want to stop and back off.

“Fuck yes.” The words are a near growl, low and guttural; my whole body spasms at their sound. “Fuck yes, take it, baby.
Take it
.”

The mountain my body was climbing peaks, and I throw myself from the cliff willingly. Brooklyn shouts, curses, and then he slams me down once more, banding his arms around me as he finds his own ending.

Chapter 36

Brooks

“I only have a few hours today.”

Hunter looks over at me from the blueprints he has laid out on the top of his hood. The edges are held down with whatever tools or box of nails were handy. His face has scruff on it, though his hair is cut short like always. He’s wearing a long sleeve, cargo shorts, work boots, and holding a steaming cup of coffee. No one would know he’s the highest ranked street-skater in the world.

Or was. Mal’s touring—so are all of his opponents. He’s here, flipping houses. I don’t ask why—like Mal said, when Hunter has figured his shit out, he’ll go.

“Oh yeah?”

I nod. The other two guys on the crew today are pulling in, unloading tools and materials from Hunter’s truck. “I have a meeting with my manager about a possible show date.”

“I thought you didn’t have anything to show?”

I didn’t. But in the last two months, I’ve produced almost five solid pieces of work. If he gives me two more and my mind keeps working the way it has, I might have five more. “Things change.”

He nods—a small smile on his face. Unlike Malcolm, Hunter won’t fling shit at me or berate me for details all day. He’ll tease and talk trash when we’re just being guys, but this? The real that’s happening between me and Red? He won’t touch this. He’s good like that. Malcolm, well, he’s an asshole.

He broke his own heart, and now his armor is thick and his barbs are sharp.

“I’ll give you a full day tomorrow. Let you know as we go through the rest of the month.”

“Whatever you can give me. We’ll fill in when you can’t make it.” I get ready to walk away and then he says my name. “I’m happy for you—really. It’s about damn time.”

I don’t know if he’s talking about my relationship with Jordan, or my newfound ability to create, but I nod and go help unload.

It’s been two weeks since Jordan and I slept together. Two weeks since she blew my mind—took my heart and held it in her hand. In that time, I’ve managed a few more late nights with her, a few days at the beach. One session where she sat for me, but I ended up mauling her instead of really painting her.

I cannot keep my hands off her. Every time I touch her, I discover something else. Not just about her, but about myself. I want to explore her body, record to memory the way her breath hitches when I touch her, the way her neck arches when I kiss her collarbone. The way her hand curls into mine when we’re lying wrapped together.

I’ve had relationships before. Some lasted months, some only days. In the past few years, those relationships have dwindled down to dates. Some girls I went out with once, some a few times. What I have with Jordan is different—not just because how I feel is different, but because when I think about my day, I automatically wonder where she will fit into it.

My art has come back—my mind has opened and my hands are always working. Drawing, painting, manipulating photos on the computer for my portfolio, adjusting light and filters—saturation—until I have hundreds of photos, topics, and ideas swimming around in my head. My magnet-pin board is full of sketches and photos, some of strangers, most of Jordan. She laughs every time she sees it, saying I make her more beautiful than she really is.

I always just shake my head, not ready or even sure if I’m capable of telling her that she can’t possibly understand how beautiful the world is to me now that I have her.

+      +      +

“I thought you changed your major.”

Jordan gazes at me with her head cocked an inch to the side. It’s a look that says “Are you serious?” when she never actually utters a word. In her glasses, it’s ten times more effective.

“I don’t officially change until next semester. Which means this semester, I still have to work on my classes. Which is why I called you.”

I stare at the construction paper, glue, scissors, markers, stencils, and other art paraphernalia laid out in perfect order on the dorm floor in front of her bed. It looks like a Kindergarten classroom.

“No.”

Her jaw drops. “But you’re an artist.”

Now it’s my turn to cock my head. “You’re not asking me for art—you’re asking me for an
art project
. I don’t do Pinterest.”

“Oh, good lord, stop being so fussy.” I balk at that, but she ignores me. Standing from her desk chair, she clips over to the supplies, throwing a piece of paper at me on her way past. I grip it and read.

“Create an activity to help students learn their letters. It must include color, and a hands-on approach that allows students to participate in their learning and success.”

Just the directions are making me sweat.

“This is my second attempt,” she says, and I look up in surprise. Her brows go flat and her neck straightens. I don’t think she even knows that when she’s mad, she looks like the rich-kid with society manners and a hell of an attitude.

“I created an app that scrambled all of the letters. Students had to touch each one and drag it to its appropriate spot in the alphabet, which was matched with a color and an animal name beginning with the said letter. The animal sound rewarded them if they were correct. If there was no sound, they had to try again.” Her voice gets tight. “My professor told me my assumption that all students had access to iPads or other technological devices required for this app was
lofty
, and showed social ignorance.”

“Dickhead.”

She still manages to blush at my language. “You are correct. I think he was more unnerved by the fact that I have the ability to create an app while he’s still finding Blackboard a challenge. The system he uses to upload all of our grades and notes,” she explains before I can ask. Then she sighs and sits down on the bed next to me.

She’s wearing pegged black pants and a black-and-white striped sweater that just kind of hangs on her. The look is comfortable—and young. I startle a little when I realize she’s just out of high school and I’m about to be halfway to my ten-year reunion.

“It’s not the activity, really, or even the professor that’s irritating me.” I wait, turning slightly to look at her. “The longer I’m here, the more I wonder what I was thinking—giving in to my parents the way I did. And then I go back to feeling guilty that I’ve stopped giving in. They gave me everything growing up. I have never wanted for a single thing, and I still don’t. Who am I to be ungracious?”

Young, but not silly, I realize. Not ignorant, not selfish.
Aware.

The problem with being too smart is that a person is able to argue both sides of any disagreement. Like Jordan right now. She feels one thing, but her rational side is telling her it’s wrong. Like the people who get lost in the wilderness and stay put—following the directions of all survival manuals and waiting for help to find them—instead of taking it upon themselves to search for shelter, food, and water. Sometimes they survive; sometimes they’re discovered. Most of the time, they quietly fade out of existence.

“It’s not wrong to want something for yourself, Red.”

“But is it wrong to accept their generosity if I can’t accept their terms?”

“Do you think they gave you a home, education, clothes, and opportunity because they expected something in return?” Her expression says y
es
. “I don’t know much about family pressure, Red. But I know humans—we can’t live if we feel stifled. Not the way we’re meant to.”

“How do you know?” Her voice isn’t defensive or accusatory. It’s curious. Jordan will always need logic: facts, statistics, evidence to support a theory before she can truly see it as valid.

I glance down. “Because I have a sister who has been beaten down by what she considers life’s expectations since she was too young to even truly understand the word. She’s not living—every day, she sees what she thinks she should be, and every day, she shrinks a little more.”

Jordan slides her hand underneath mine where it rests on the bed. Turning it palm up, she links our fingers, waiting for me to look over at them. “I’m sorry, Brooklyn.”

I nod. And then I grip her hand. “Don’t live beneath expectations and should haves, Red. You won’t survive.”

Chapter 37

Jordan

Nala has caught a cold. In order to avoid catching it as well, I offered to go to the store and get her some medicine and supplies. I have to get more sticky notes anyway.

I don’t go to the student store—instead, I wind into San Diego and find the closest grocery store, familiarizing myself with the city I’ve begun to fall for. Los Angeles is bright. Like all big cities, there are pockets of ugly, depressed, neglected. Where I come from, everything is bright and shiny and clean. It’s new. But while it’s new and exciting, it’s also anxious. Los Angeles is never satisfied—I don’t feel that way in San Diego.

I know there is money here. Every city has rich and poor. But the people I’m with here aren’t about that—they’re about each other—the place, the water, the life. It’s amazingly easy to step back from who I was and see who I want to be. And to see where I went wrong in blaming my parents for keeping me here.

Even if I had been at Yale, I still would have been the girl my mother had made me, I just would have had the freedom of three thousand miles to make decisions. Here, a mere two hours from home, I’ve had to choose my freedom. Earn it.

Brooklyn’s a big part of that.

It’s odd the way a person can go through life only having one goal, only knowing one way, one dream. And then someone comes along, someone so different than who they expected, and yet, the exact right someone to show them just what it means to feel.

I have known Brooklyn for just over two months—I wasn’t lying when I told him it felt like forever. I trust him with pieces of myself, my mind and my body, I have trusted no one else with. And though he is still quiet, still more of a listener than a talker, I know he talks to me more than he did. More than he is even aware.

Life has become an adventure with Brooklyn, because I’m not just focused on where I am going, I’m focused on here and now and who I have.

The grocery store is another adventure. I’m slightly ashamed to admit I have never been inside of a grocery store to shop. A clothing store, yes. Even a convenience store from time to time when getting gas. But never an honest to goodness grocery store.

I grab a handheld basket from the front when I walk in, a little amazed the layout seems to be exactly what it is in movies. Smiling like an idiot, I enjoy the monotonous beep of items being checked out and begin to wander, reading the signs over aisles while I go, stopping here and there to pick things up.

By the time I have made it to the cold-and-flu aisle, my basket is full, the plastic handles leaving an impression on my arm. Setting it down, I rub my skin where the mark is, and I begin perusing the overly-full shelves of cough and cold medicine, frowning when someone next to me begins hacking.

With a shuffle toward my basket, I glance over and stop, staring right at Ashton as she coughs into her arm. Her back is hunched, and her body rattles while she coughs and coughs. It’s painful to listen to, even more painful to watch as her body threatens to fall apart from the force of the expulsion.

When she’s done, she reaches for another box and throws it into her basket to join several others. I’m about to say her name, but another coughing fit takes over, and she drops the basket, one arm crooked to cough into her elbow, the other arm wrapped around her middle as if holding her together.

She’s wearing a knee-length sweater that falls open in front. It’s paired with leggings that accentuate her thin legs and narrow hips. Though she isn’t the thinnest person I have ever seen, something about the picture she makes tells me her body needs
more
, that this size isn’t natural for her at all. She is gaunt, all sharp angles and protruding bones.

“Here, let me help.”

I walk the few feet and bend down to pick up her basket. “It’s okay,” she says, leaning over for the basket at the same time. Dizziness overcomes her, and she reaches out blindly for something to hold onto.