Ground Rules

“Why does it matter?!” Cole’s hands dropped to my waist, and he pulled me into his chest so swiftly that I blew out a breath. “It matters because I’ve spent two years trying to get over you and move on, and one run-in from you landed us to this right here.” He half-chuckled, sarcastically. “I don’t even deserve to fucking touch you, and yet, I can’t push you away.”

“Then don’t.” We both paused at my words. It hurt to miss him as much as I did.

His front pressed up against my middle, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself level. What were we doing? What was I doing? “You don’t mean that.”

I stayed silent because there was a battle going on inside my head, and I didn’t know which way I was supposed to go. Or what I was supposed to feel.

My body wanted his hands on me. My body wanted him to unravel the tightly tied bundle that was currently making me burn on the inside. But I knew, deep down, that this was crossing a line that had been drawn by the past.

Hope crashed and fell when Cole’s hands left my waist and landed on my shoulders. He turned me around quickly and put my back to him.

Did he really just shut me out? Shouldn’t that be what I want? After everything?

“Like I said, you don’t mean that.”

My teeth gritted, and we were falling into our old habits. Fighting each other, and flinging out insults, and deciding what the other was thinking. “I mean everything I say, Cole. I’m not that same girl you were used to back in high school. I make my own decisions, and I don’t let people sway them. I also don’t allow people to put words in my mouth or hide me until it’s convenient for them.”

His sarcastic, half-whisper laugh irked me, and he likely knew that. “Then, why are you hiding in Ryan’s bathroom?”

My mouth shut with his question, and my back straightened. I said nothing, and neither did he. The sounds outside the bedrooms were quieting down now, at least from Ryan’s side, and it reminded me that there was something much bigger going on right now other than the way my body wanted to lean into him despite the huge chunk of time that sat like a giant boulder between us. We were both so different, yet still the same. I swallowed back a lump when the word home came to mind. Cole always felt so right to me. No one else had ever measured up. Not once. Every guy who had taken up space in my head didn’t even come close to Cole. And I hated that.

The longer Cole and I stayed in that tiny shower, the more I felt myself winding up. There was so much I wanted to say to him, so many feelings coiling and blending that I felt like I was seconds from exploding. They were hot but intimate, deep but painful. My stomach dropped when I truly let his words sink in. Guilt. He felt guilty about that night. What would he say if he knew that I was in Ryan’s shower because I knew that he was the one who had started it all? What would he do?

“It wasn’t your fault, Cole. None of it was.” My whisper was so low I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me, but he did. I knew he did, because the air turned thick as he reached out and placed his steady hands on my hips again.

“Part of it was, and you won’t change my mind, Maze.”

Slowly, I turned around in his grasp, too worked up over my emotions to remember that we were stuck in a bathroom because both bedrooms were being occupied for sex at a frat party. My heart skipped with every breath I took, and without even seeing Cole’s chiseled features, I knew that he’d been hurt over what had happened. My hand gingerly reached up and landed on the side of his cheek. My chin tipped as I tried to make out his eyes through the bleak darkness. The scruff of his facial hair felt rough against my palm, and it reminded me that he’d grown up since we last touched. “It wasn’t,” I whispered as he pulled me in close. “Kate told me that you changed after that night, and I’m beginning to see that she was right.”

Cole’s hand left my waist, and he gripped my wrist tightly. “Why are you here, Maze?”

Our bodies were flush now, and everything came to life. A rush of familiar thrill raced to my lips. “Not for this; I can assure you of that.”

The husk in his tone licked over parts of me that shouldn’t have been alive. “For what?”

And that was when I did it. My toes curled upward, pushing me closer to his mouth, and the very second our lips collided, I felt myself click back into place. My stomach tightened, trapping the heated butterflies inside as his mouth opened, allowing me to take control. The hand he had on my waist wrapped around my lower back, and he pulled me closer into his hard body, chasing my tongue with his. We kissed and sucked, and it was as if no time had passed at all. We were still wrapped up in one another, too blinded by what we felt to stop. I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to think about how my heart would feel after this, or how this would screw up my entire plan of coming to Noany Bay. All I cared about was how Cole broke away and hastily turned our bodies around so I was the one with my back pressed against the tiled wall, and he was the one in front.

“I’m too selfish to stop,” he said over my mouth before tugging on my lip with his teeth. I burned and felt a strong need that I had only ever felt thinking of him. My leg was pulled up and wrapped around his hip, and he pushed into me, and it was so delicious that I grew delirious. Cole was talented. Even in high school, he knew what he was doing. But now? As a man who seemed so much more mature and aware of himself? I wasn’t even sure how to take it all in.

“You tore me to pieces that day, Maze, and I don’t even think I realized how badly it hurt until now.”

Just as Cole dove back in to eat the words on my tongue, the light of the bathroom flicked on, and we both stiffened.

Oh, my God.

Reality shifted back into place, and the look on Cole’s face had to have mirrored mine: we were shocked and completely caught up in whatever had just occurred between us. Our eyes clashed, and my heart thrashed. An entire silent conversation happened in a matter of three seconds. The look on his tight features said, This conversation isn’t over. But I was thinking the opposite.