Chapter Four
Mazey
What was I doing?What in the ever-loving fuck was I doing? I wanted to slap myself, but I was stuck. My feet were cemented to the shower floor, and I knew that something had just shifted between us. I told him to prove it. Prove what? Prove that he and I still had that world-rocking, undeniable chemistry that everyone around us could always feel—even my parents. The number of times they found me in my room, looking out my window at Cole as he peered down at me, was downright embarrassing.
Our friends knew it, even if we never openly talked or touched in front of them. It was the way we snagged each other’s attention. It was the way the burning jealousy of another guy looking in my direction made Cole lose his shit on multiple occasions, or the way I would excuse myself if I saw a girl on his lap.
We were so young and stupid.
Or maybe I was the stupid one.
After all, I somehow had allowed myself to become so distracted two years ago, at my first ever popular party, that I got date-raped…or something. I couldn’t even remember all of what happened, only that Ryan gave me a drink, and the next day, I woke up throbbing in places I shouldn’t have been with marks that told a silent truth.
And now, I was standing here in his shower, two years later, nearly combusting with sexual tension that I hadn’t felt so strongly in my life before. Not even with Stanford’s quarterback that I’d allowed myself to divulge in for one night—and one night only.
Ironically, that was what broke the camel's back and had me transferring here. Sex with a quarterback will do that to you, I guess.
“Maze,” Cole’s whisper was like a lightning strike coming down from above and electrocuting me right there. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I’m not the one who lies, Cole. That’s you.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
My hand in his hair tightened, and it felt like I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t, but with Cole, things were different. He always gave me a boost of confidence with just one fleeting glance my way. As if his eyes kissed my soul and brought me to life. “But you’ve never really told me the truth either. Have you?”
“Do you want the truth right now?” I peered down at him, feeling his soft whisper float over the thin sliver of skin on my belly. He was still crouched down, and I liked seeing him like that. I liked seeing him kneeling below me, looking up at me as if he realized that he had fucked up two years ago. It wasn’t all his fault, though. I was the one that hid in the shadows. He was just the one who never shined the light.
Cole’s nose gracefully brushed over the very top of my jeans, and my eyes widened. Heat rushed to my middle, and my lip was seconds from bleeding from the tight grip I had on it. “I can give you the truth, Maze. I’m just not sure you want it.” He inhaled deeply, and I held my breath along with him. “Answer my question from earlier.”
My eyes pelted back and forth as I tried to focus on my breathing instead of the sounds coming from both bedrooms. They were making this much, much hotter than it needed to be, even if some of those sounds belonged to the one guy who had started the catapult years prior.
“Are you afraid of me, Mazey? Do you still think it was me?”
I swallowed back the thundering feelings climbing from my chest and answered simply, “I never thought it was you.” He inhaled again, and this time, his hot breath washed over my belly, and he rested his forehead against me in what felt like relief. “But my question for you is, why did you let everyone believe it was? You showed them the very worst part of you, and we both know that it wasn’t even real.”
He pulled back slightly, and I was cursing the darkness. What I would have given to see the storm brew in his luscious green eyes. But being in the dark was likely the only reason we were able to talk about these things. If it were light, I probably would have darted away at the first sign of life.
I’d planned this talk over and over again in my head, picturing us arguing and turning our backs on one another. We were always so good at arguing in the plain of day and then silently speaking with rushed touches in the dead of night. Cole and I were impossible, but for a single, fleeting moment, standing this close to him with his rough hands gracing my hips, things seemed far from impossible—even if there was a gap of time between us full of heavy baggage.
My body still reacted to Cole’s, and that shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did.
“Guilt, Mazey. Guilt.”
Guilt? My fingers tugged the strands of his hair, and I tipped his head up even if I couldn’t fully make eye contact with him. “You weren’t at fault for that night, Cole. I know it wasn’t you who did it.”
The gritty, nearly silent growl vibrated my skin. “It was my fault.” Cole rose to his feet, and for a brief second, I was second-guessing everything I’d uncovered over the last two years. Did he know something? Fear should have caused me to take a step back, but this was Cole. My Cole. No one knew him like I did. Except, did I even know him anymore?
My heart thumped as his steady hands wrapped around my cheeks. His forehead came down to rest on mine, and I felt that same connection that I’d always felt with him. It was there, and it was alive and breathing just as much as we were. “I wasn’t there when you needed me, Mazey. Someone hurt you, and I was too fucked up to even stop it. I was so fucking angry that night, because people were talking about how hot you looked in that outfit that I drowned myself in booze so I didn’t do something I regretted. And then everything that came after…”
The hurt flashed within. My bruised heart ached.
“And now you’re standing here in front of me, and I’m still not the man I should be when it comes to you, because all I fucking want to do is plunge my tongue inside your pretty little mouth and erase the past, and we both know that isn’t possible.”
His words were dirty, and the room was an inferno. My breathing was loud, and I knew he could hear it. He had to have known that I was bundled just as tightly as he was in the moment. All I wanted to do was feel his hands on my body and for him to silence my thoughts of the past that I wasn’t quite over yet.
His mouth was right over mine. His lips nearly brushed against mine when he repeated his question, “I want to know why you’re here, Mazey.”
“Why does it matter?” My voice was shaky, and my stomach was coiled with nerves and something so needy that I physically ached.