Washed Up (Bayside Heroes)

“Eighteen isn’t that young,” I defend, chest swelling. “And I’ve been around long enough to know that you deserve a hell of a lot more than what Josh gives you.”

Her eyes soften then, searching mine. “Sometimes, you look at me in this way…” She pauses. “Just like you’re looking at me right now, and I feel like… I don’t know. I feel like you’re older, like you’re my age. Like… like you know the part of me no one else knows.”

My heart thumps twice as hard in my chest, and I swallow, brushing the strands of hair that have fallen from her ponytail behind one ear. “I like to think I see what no one else takes the time to,” I whisper.

As my hand drops from tucking her hair, I run the pad of my thumb along her bottom lip.

She sucks in a stiff breath, and I feel her heart accelerate, hear the erratic pulse as her eyes flick to mine.

“Greg…”

And I don’t know what it is that takes over me, that makes me do something so completely idiotic that I should punch my own self in the nose just for thinking of it. But in that moment, it feels like the only thing I can do.

I frame her face in my hands, eyes tracing the swells of her lips before I meet her gaze.

And then, I kiss her.

I wish I could say it was smooth and with the grace of an expert, that I kiss her so damn good that she can’t help but want to strip all my clothes off and let me take her right there on that roof. But the truth is I’m shaking, and fumbling, and kissing her with as much earnest as I can manage without passing out at the fact that I’m kissing her at all.

She’s stiff in my arms, against the kiss, and still, I can hear how loud and fast her heart is racing in her chest.

But then…

She softens.

Her hands slowly, tentatively crawl up my chest to loop around my neck, allowing me access to her waist, which I hold onto tightly as I pull her in for more. That one little shift in her posture gives me all the confidence I was missing, and I cradle her close as I sweep my tongue against her lips, begging for access.

She grants it with a moan that is my undoing, a moan I know I’ll hear for the rest of my life no matter what happens after tonight.

She tastes so sweet, so perfect, and my cock strains against my jeans as I lean her back against the shingled roof.

Then, her eyes shoot open, hands pressing into my chest and shoving hard.

“Oh, my God.” She bolts upright, tearing away from me when I try to reach for her to soothe the shame and worry evident in her eyes now.

“It’s okay,” I try, but she shakes her head.

“It’s most definitely not okay, Greg.” She looks at me, pinning her bottom lip between her teeth with her gaze falling to my lips like she wants to kiss me again.

Do it, I silently dare her.

But she buries her face in her hands with something between a laugh and a groan.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. She peeks up at me then, guilt shading her cheeks. “God, that was really messed up. I shouldn’t have done that. You’re my son’s friend and eighteen, for Christ’s sake.”

That makes her bury her face again, and I grind my teeth, feeling like my age is a curse for the first time in my life. Everyone around me, my parents especially, preach all the time how much I should soak up this time in my life, how thankful I should be for my youth and freedom.

Right now, I’d give it all up just for the chance to have Amanda Parks take me seriously and let me kiss her again.

Her head snaps up, eyes wide. “Shit,” she says, looking at me. She shakes her head, over and over. “Greg, we can’t… no one can ever know about this.”

I frown against how that stings for me, how my chest aches with the insult, but I nod. “No one ever will.”

She nods, gratitude in her eyes, and then she sighs, wrapping her arms around her legs again.

And I fight the urge to pull her back into my arms, instead.

CHAPTER THREE

AMANDA

“Mom, please, sit down.”

“I’m just tidying up a bit,” I tell David, cringing when I realize no amount of tidying could be done to save the catastrophe that is my house with just minutes to spare before Greg Weston gets here.

I hastily throw the dishes in the dishwasher and start shoving anything on the kitchen counters into the nearest cabinet as my son chuckles.

“You are the definition of a hot mess.”

“That’s not nice to say to your mother.”