Every Time I Fall (Orchid Valley 3)

“Celibate September,” Smithy says, lifting his vape pen to his mouth. “You know, like No Nut November, but in September.”

“What’s No Nut November?” I ask, but I immediately wish I could take the question back. With Smithy, I usually don’t want to know.

“Gee, a whole month,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “How will you ever make it that long without sex?”

Smith exhales a plume of vapor, and I sidestep to dodge the potential contact high. Smithy never vapes the legal stuff. “Not just no sex,” he says. “None of it.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, like an idiot, but at this point I think my mouth would blurt anything to avoid meeting Dean’s gaze. Also, there’s been some wine involved.

“No shucking the corn,” Smithy says.

Dean cringes, and I shake my head. “I don’t even wanna know what that means.”

“You know, flogging the dolphin, spanking the monkey, poaching the egg, shaking hands with the milkman, polishing the banister, doing some DIY.”

“We get it, Smith,” Dean says, shaking his head.

Smithy starts waxing poetic about the virtues of celibacy and how great sex is gonna be when he finally “slimes the banana,” and I excuse myself and find my way to the cooler on the patio and another wine spritzer. I’m tipsy, but not tipsy enough to hear Smithy’s sex conquest stories, which is no doubt where this conversation is headed. Somehow with Smithy, that’s always where it’s headed.

When I stand, Dean’s there. And he’s staring at me. My mind immediately leaps to the conversation we had the other night, and I’m again swamped with regret. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I turn around. That wasn’t what I was expecting.

“Are you okay?” he asks softly.

I swallow and nod. “Yeah. Just needed a reprieve from Smithy’s visuals.”

He chuckles, but his expression shifts back to serious. “Maybe I need to apologize for earlier. I shouldn’t have been so pushy.”

I shake my head. “Why? Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

“Really?” He folds his arms.

“Your willingness is just surprising, that’s all.”

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot this week. And I was getting the feeling that maybe you’d been thinking about me too. Was that my imagination?”

No. It wasn’t. But admitting that pretty much means accepting this is going to happen, and there’s too big a part of me that’s still the girl who got laughed at in high school, the one who had to get creative while changing in the locker room because the other girls would tease her for being heavy. I’m still the girl who got dumped in college after forgetting what everyone else could see so clearly—that my boyfriend, the love of my life, was completely out of my league and only with me because he felt sorry for me.

I know Dean isn’t lying to me about what he wants. He wouldn’t lie to me about this, but that doesn’t change that it’s so hard to believe. That little part of me will always be waiting for him to break into laughter and tell me his offer was a big joke.

So I don’t say anything at all.

He scans my face, his gaze hovering a beat at my lips before lifting to my eyes again. “If this isn’t what you want, I won’t push this.”

“It’s not that I don’t . . .” Want? God. That word makes me feel way too vulnerable. “I’m scared.”

He takes a step closer, and I can’t breathe. He settles his hand on my hip and squeezes. “Tell me what scares you.”

I’m scared you won’t like my body. That you’ll see me naked and be disappointed. That I’ll get naked and freeze up. I’m scared that I’ll fall for you. But that sort of vulnerability is a kind of masochism I just don’t have the bandwidth for tonight. So I settle for the lame but obvious excuse. “You’re my brother’s best friend. You’re my friend.”

Swallowing hard, he drops the hand from my hip and steps back. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I told you I wouldn’t push it. I meant it. I’ll start getting these ideas out of my head right away.” His lips curve into a tight smile. “I’ve done it before. I can do it again.”

He’s done it before? When? Halloween?

Then he turns and walks away, and I feel like I’ve let him down somehow. That makes no sense. Dean is amazing. He’s gorgeous and sweet and funny, and God . . . if anyone could teach me how to be good in bed, it would be him, right? Maybe he’s right. Maybe “good in bed” isn’t a thing, but if he could help me gain some confidence, maybe it wouldn’t matter that this will probably end with my broken heart. At least after I recovered, I’d have a chance with someone else—a chance to not be alone all the time.