ChapterEight
Irefresh the page, hoping something else will magically appear. Nope, nothing. With a groan, I look around the small room that’s now my office, thanks to Blink helping me clear it out yesterday after our closet shenanigans, and tap my fingers on my desk.
There isn’t much in here apart from a desk, a chair, and a sofa under the window, but it will do. I’m tempted to lie down on the sofa and take a nap, thanks to the people in the motel room next to mine going at it last night like a pair of Energizer Bunnies on speed.
Unfortunately, I have a thousand things to do, and sleep isn’t one of them.
A knock on my open door has me looking over and seeing Vega leaning against the frame, looking all sweaty from working out. I haven’t seen him since the showdown in the restaurant, but I knew he’d find me when he was ready.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“So you and Blink?” He grits his teeth, his hands fisting at his sides.
“Fuck,” I curse.
He stomps inside, pacing as he runs his hands through his hair.
“I want to be that guy, the one who congratulates the winner before bowing out gracefully. But I’m not, not even fucking close. I’ve wanted you for so long, even before it was okay to want you, and I’ll be damned if I let someone come in and steal you away from me now.”
I stand up and close the door, not wanting everyone to hear my private business.
“Nobody is stealing me. I’m not a fucking toy, Vega.”
He whirls and is on me in a second.
“You saying you don’t want me to play with you?” He practically purrs at me.
Danger, Will Robinson!
I fight the urge to back up as Vega’s body presses against mine.
“Tell me you don’t want me, even just a little, and I’ll back off. I won’t bother you at all. I’ll come and go around your schedule so that you never have to see me,” he offers, his lips a hairsbreadth from mine. As he breathes out, I breathe in, our chests touching a fraction as the anticipation crackles between us.
“I don’t know what I want, Vega. I don’t want you to go, but I’m not sure I’m in the right place to offer you anything more than friendship right now.”
His eyes close, and he swallows, making me feel like an ass. The thing is, I do want Vega. He is all my childhood fantasies personified, but there is a part of me that’s worried too. If we make a reality out of my dreams and it all falls apart, it will have damaged something that helped pull me through some pretty brutal years.
I’m not sure I want to taint the memories that were innocent and pure with something that could fester and decay, taking them from me. At times, all I had was the blinding hope of what-ifs.
“Just…don’t shut me out. I know you can’t, for whatever reason, say yes. But just don’t say no. Please don’t say no.”
Now it’s my turn to close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“Saying no to you is not something I’m sure I’m capable of. I need you to rein it in a little until I have my head together. I know you don’t get it, not after what went down with Blink, but it’s not the same.”
His body tenses and he takes a step back, the connection between us beginning to fray.
I reach out and grab his arm before he can leave. “There is an ease between Blink and me because we were always friends. I never saw him as more and never thought he looked at me with anything other than friendly affection. That’s changed, but in a way that just feels like a natural progression. What me and you have is not that. We were never friends.”
He shakes me off and moves to the door.
“I was in love with you,” I whisper, making him freeze. “In only the way teenage girls can be. I felt adrift my whole life. I was terrified that one day I would just disappear and become one of the invisible ones that people walk past on the street as if they aren’t really there. I was so scared, Vega, of being forgotten, of fading away, and nobody would even notice. This place, Blink, Hank, the fighting, it all helped anchor me in the here and now. It gave me something to hold on to, tethering me here with bonds I was too young to understand. But you…”
I lift my hand and rub my neck. “You didn’t make me feel bound. You made me feel free. There was something about you that made me feel like I was safe to let go because instead of watching me fall, you’d help me fly. It was a heady feeling, and there may or may not have been a small amount of hero-worship involved.”
“How small?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at me, his lips lift a little.
I pinch my fingers together to indicate a tiny amount. “This much.”