Thayer turns to face me, raising an eyebrow.
“The other night,” I start, knowing he’s not going to offer information willingly. I’m going to have to pry it from him, piece by piece. “Do you regret it? Do you regret…me?” My heart pounds in my chest, my stomach swirling with nerves waiting for his answer.
The muscles in his jaw flex. He doesn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes tells me everything I need to know.
Thayer
Three long years of foreplay finally came to a head, and even in my wildest fucking dreams could I have imagined how good it would feel to finally be inside her. The fact that she was a virgin had me feeling more than a little conflicted. It complicates things, but at the same time, I fucking love that she waited for me. I tried to stay away. I even tried to go back to class. I thought some space from Shayne would do something to dull my need for her, but I should’ve known it wouldn’t work. She was gone for almost a year, and when she got back, it was like no time had passed at all. I made her out to be a villain in my mind, but when I look at her, all I see is my Shayne.
“The other night—do you regret it?” Her eyes beg me to say no. “Do you regret…me?”
I hesitate, not knowing how to answer that, and I see the hurt slice through her.
“Then why are you here?” she asks, her voice growing in pitch. “If you regret me, then why come here?” She walks over to the desk in the corner of her room, retrieving the hoodie I left in her car earlier. “What is this?” she demands, holding it out in front of me. “You fuck me, then you disappear. You take your jacket back, then you leave me this?” She throws it at me and I make no move to catch it, letting it fall to the floor at my feet.
“Coming here was a bad idea.”
“Why?” she asks, her tone growing frustrated. “Because you’re afraid you might feel something? Maybe even feel something for me?”
When I don’t respond, she continues.
“Because God forbid you ever show me anything real, right? Every time you start to let me in, you shut down, then say or do something hurtful to push me away.”
“You think I don’t feel?” I finally snap. “All I fucking do is feel since you’ve been back! And every time I see your face, I’m reminded of the night Danny died. The night I failed him. Because of you. And then I sleep with you, on the anniversary of his death of all days.”
She draws back, clearly hurt by my words. But they keep falling out of my mouth, unable to stop. “You want me to talk about my feelings?” I ask, closing the distance between us. Shayne’s pretty features tug into a frown, her delicate jaw tensing. “Every time I’m with you, it feels like a betrayal to him.”
And there it is. I didn’t fully realize it myself until this moment, but it’s the truth.
“You blame me,” she says in a stunned whisper, and I can tell the thought never so much as entered her mind before. I see the wheels turning as she puts the pieces together. “So it doesn’t matter if Grey’s innocent, does it? It’s because of me. You hate me because you blame me.”
“I blame me for getting too wrapped up in you. Even knowing wha
t your brother might have done, I still fucking want you. What does that say about me? That I can’t stay away from the sister of the guy who most likely killed my brother?
“At first, I was angry. So fucking angry. I wanted to set fire to everything I loved, just to watch it burn. You just happened to be at the top of that list. So I pushed you away. I wanted to hurt you because I was hurting. Then you were gone, and that anger was all I had left. I used it like a lifeline, because as long as I felt that rage, I didn’t have to feel anything else.
“Until you came back. You distracted me from the shit show my life had become, and I welcomed the distraction at first. I craved being around you, even just to piss you off. I needed our encounters. I told myself it was okay to touch you, to take a little bit of the fucking comfort it gave me, as long as I didn’t let it go too far.”
I jam my fingers through my hair, pacing the floor.
“But then I started to forget all the reasons I was so fucking angry in the first place, and suddenly, one day I woke up and Danny wasn’t my first thought in the morning.” I stop my pacing, looking into her eyes. “It was you.”
Tears are streaming down her face now, and she makes no effort to wipe them away.
“So yes. I regret it, but only because I want to do it again.” I take a step toward her. “And again. And again. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”
She swallows hard, crossing her arms. “Then we should end it now, Thayer.” She nods at her own words, as if trying to convince herself. “Because I don’t think I can handle losing you again if…” she trails off, angrily swiping at the tears that fall down her cheeks. “You have to be the one to do it. You have to walk away.”
Eating up the distance between us with two big steps, I grasp her chin, forcing her to look at me. Her eyelashes stick together, wet with tears, her blue eyes brighter than normal.
“What if I don’t know how?”
“Then just…don’t.”
We move for each other at the same time, our lips colliding. I bend down to curl my hands around the backs of her thighs and lift her up, carrying her over to her bed. There are no more words, only hungry lips and frenzied hands and harsh breaths between us. I release my grip on her thighs, and her body slides down mine. I tug on the hem of her sweatshirt and she lifts her arms for me as I pull it over her head, revealing her bare tits. I cup them in my hands, squeezing, and she melts into my touch.
When she was gone, I didn’t think I missed her. How could I when she rarely strayed from my thoughts? Our memories plagued me, and if I could’ve wiped them from my mind completely, I would’ve. But this past week, I missed her like a fucking missing limb. The lightning might have branded my skin, but Shayne branded whatever’s left of my heart.