I want to kiss him. I want to lie down in the grass and curl up beside him. Then I want to do that again and again and again until I’m raw and worn out and I don’t feel anything.
Because right now, I feel something; everything.
I swallow and look away from his softly probing eyes. The haze of sex and orgasm is wearing off and I carefully try to unhook my legs from around him. He gently pulls out and lowers me to the ground.
“Excuse me,” I say to him and then disappear behind a bush to relieve myself. No one wants to walk up a hill with cum streaming down their legs.
When I reemerge, he’s fastening the belt on his jeans and smiling. He looks like he’s just been laid. There’s the relaxed peace about him that I haven’t seen in a while.
“I guess we should head back,” I say, nodding at the road. I walk over to it, avoiding him.
He tries to reach for me anyway but I slip out of his grasp. “Where are you going?” he asks and I can hear the puzzlement in his voice. “What’s the rush? Stay and relax awhile.”
Just then there’s the sound of crunching gravel, and at the bottom of the hill I see Hamish’s truck coming toward us. I step out into the road and wave at him.
“Gemma,” I hear Josh say but Hamish is pulling the truck to a stop.
“Did you guys have a nap or something?” Hamish asks, his arm hanging out of the window. “Come on in.”
I smile my thanks to him and quickly get in the passenger side. I look over my shoulder at Josh but he’s standing there, his gaze jagged. He looks to Hamish. “Thanks, but I’ll walk. I could use it.” He nearly spits out those last words.
I feel a sting but push it aside and close the door. The truck starts up the road and I avoid the side mirrors. I don’t want to see Josh walking through the wake of dust from the truck.
I feel like a bitch. I am a bitch. We fucked and I bailed and that is so not what Josh deserves. But I don’t know how to keep sex as just sex, and I don’t know how to keep a friend as just a friend, and Josh is a friend and sex all rolled into one.
And he’s something else, too, something that gets under my skin, and that’s the thing I’m afraid of discovering, the thing that wants to loosen my grip. If he gets too far under my skin, he’ll stay there.
Chapter Sixteen
JOSH
I’ve never been so happy to leave a place in all my life. I sit down in the back of Mr. Orange and my leg bounces from nerves and it doesn’t stop until Gemma starts the engine and we’re pulling onto the road.
Yesterday felt like the best day of my life combined with the worst. It went from fuckawesome to fucking terrible in a matter of minutes, but I guess that shouldn’t surprise me when I’m in a country where the weather can change at the drop of a hat and I’m with a woman who’s so fucking moody it’s like being around two different people.
I still don’t know what went wrong. One minute we were having it out, yelling at each other in the middle of the road, and it was good, it was brilliant, because finally Gemma was giving me something—her feelings, her fears. The fact that she actually cared what happened between me and Amber—it should have made me feel guilty but I only felt happiness. Here was the validation I needed, evidence that she cared.
Then it led to hot-as-fuck sex, and I knew she could feel me, I knew I was in deep and she was letting me in. It was physical but it was the start. Everything I’d been holding inside I let loose into her. I wanted to fuck it out of her, her emptiness, her coldness, the person she hides behind.
I thought I was succeeding.
And then it was like that beautiful, soft, vulnerable light I saw shining in her was snuffed out. I didn’t expect her to start spooning me and whispering sweet nothings in my ear, but I also didn’t expect to see that blank chill in her eyes, for her to treat me like nothing had happened.
Everything had just happened. Now she just wanted to sweep it under the rug. We fucked and that was that, and now we’re back to being extremely awkward around each other.
But that’s not what I want. At this point I want more than just a hot fuck, but you know what, I’ll take more of that if I can get it. But she doesn’t even want to give in to the physical and it blows my mind because I know she came and loved every rough minute of it. She’s great at faking life but she can’t fake that.
Naturally the rest of the day was all strained bullshit. She kept to herself and to Amber, and the closest I got to her was during dinner when we sat beside each other. She wouldn’t even look at me.
Now we’re supposed to head up to Kaikoura before taking the ferry back to the North Island, and I’m having second thoughts. I can’t stand being in this bus anymore with her, and with the way things are, I’ve had enough, frankly. It’s too bad because, for all the mind games and craziness, she has an inner beauty that comes through when everything is just right; that beauty is the only reason I’ve been able to hang on for so long.
But I’ve got my limits.
“Hey Gemma,” I say as we roar down past the blue-harbored town of Akaroa. “How much do I owe you so far for the trip? You’ve paid for a bunch of things already.”
She eyes me in the rearview mirror, seeming surprised that I’m talking to her. “I’m not sure. I’ll look, I have it written down on my phone.”
“Can we stop by the nearest ATM?” I ask.
She frowns slightly. “Of course, but I don’t need it right now.”