The smooth way Mr. Sexy rolled off her tongue made me grin.
"Well, now," I said, pleased. "How long has this desiring-of-pants-removal been going on, sweetness?"
Instead of a sassy reply, I got a series of uncomfortable contortions and my ribcage was dented by a flying elbow as she turned around in my lap. I jerked back defensively. "Oof."
Then she was facing me, her gentle eyes staring into mine with surprising candidness.
All injuries were instantly forgotten.
"It's been going on," she whispered.
"Since when? New Year's? Thanksgiving?" I tapped her chin. "You said a long time, so … I know, it was the fireworks last summer. The Fourth of July is when you started noticing me in that way."
She bit her lip. "A long time. Years. Please … yeah, please don't tease me about it."
Years.
Years.
I stared down at her with consternation. "You're serious."
She nodded, looking scared. Ashamed. Defiant.
Charis Sloane was telling me she'd wanted me for years, and she wasn't messing with me.
"You mean … you occasionally looked at my ass and … "
"No. I mean, I looked at your ass a lot. I tried not to, but there it was. There all of you was. I mean, I knew I had no right to look and you were too young, and then later on you were taken, but that's what I did. All the time. So now you know."
"Fuck, Char." Something twisted in my gut. "Oh, fuck." Then, as it really hit me what she was saying: "Fuck, fuck. Fuck."
CHAPTER 23
One Year Ago-The Scream
Charis: Hey, are you doing primal scream tonight?
Asher: I don't scream.
Charis: Why? Undergraduates are always stressed out. Aren't you stressed out?
Asher: Not really. Even if I was, breaking my vocal cords won't help.
Charis: What do you do when you have three finals in one day and a paper due and you're all discombobulated?
Asher: Did you really use that word? Discombobulated? I thought it was just invented for use in standardized tests.
Charis: Ash …
Asher: Academic pressure doesn't bother me. I test well, Sloane.
Charis: Okay, then say a shipment of defective trackers was overlooked and customers were threatening to pull their orders. Would that stress you out enough to scream?
Asher: We'd solve the problem eventually. And if I lose everything, I'll just make it again on something else. I've got a few things in the works.
Charis: I don't know how you have such a relaxed attitude. I for one am gonna scream.
Asher: What's the occasion?
Charis: I don't know. Sometimes things just build up in me and screaming is the only way. I can use a pillow but when the whole campus does it, that's even better.
Asher: I'll come with you.
Charis: Why?
Asher: To cheer you on. Watch you dominate. Nobody's gonna outscream my girl.
Charis: I've never had scream support before.
Asher: I'll always support your screams, Sloane.
Asher
CHARIS SCRAMBLED OFF THE chair. ""I knew I shouldn't have said anything. Listen, don't treat me like a lameass or I'll have to hurl. Forget what I said about teasing, just do what comes naturally, make a joke or something, will you?"
"A joke?" I said incredulously. I had come to my feet, too. Something told me I needed to stay close or she'd run.
"Whatever. Anything except feeling sorry for me." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Look, you were in high school and that's not right. I even had a boyfriend. Nothing needed to be said because nothing was gonna happen. So stop it with the stupid pity."
Pity?
Try anger.
When I was a teenager, for fuck's sake?
"Fuck."
The intensity of my desire to smash my fist into something shocked me. Mel's instincts had been right, righter than she knew.
"I am not," I said hotly, "pitying you. I'm pissed. At you. Why the hell didn't you say something to me?"
Char looked stunned. She even looked over her shoulder, as if I might be talking to somebody else. "Uh, I couldn't. How could I? You were a boy. Stop being mad at me. It wasn't a possibility and it was wrong."
"It was never wrong."
"So you say."
"I do say."
"Huh."
"I'm also pissed at myself. I thought I knew exactly how idiotic I'd been. Now it seems I wasn't even close."
"It wasn't that major," she said, jutting out her chin. "You were good-looking, Asher, you always looked and acted older than your years, and even at sixteen you were, well … but it was just lust. People deal with unrequited lust all the time."
I nodded, rubbing my neck, but I wasn't convinced. I remembered how hot I'd been for Char. Nothing in her manner said this was a casual attraction.
All this time, she'd been attracted.
All this time, she'd kept it from me.
Utterly.
I'd had no clue.
No, I'd had negative clue. My cluefulness was a negative number.
Shit. Did I even know my best friend?
Not that I hadn't been guilty of some deception, myself. But that was self-deception. I hadn't tried to keep anything from her.
I needed to think about this.
Could be she was right about lusting for a teenager. As a sixteen-year-old virgin, I was not considered jailbait in our state. But I would have been too young to handle the matter maturely. And she had been taken.
Not that I'd have let all that stop me from trying. But I'd almost certainly have crashed into a wall, either before I fucked her or afterward.
But at nineteen? By then I'd had plenty of girls and I'd gained some maturity. I already had the Big Four, right? (To refresh your memory: common and street sense, brain and people smarts.)
She was single. I could have handled it, handled her. We could have grown together. We could have …
Except you never know.
"I get it, sort of. But why did you keep it a secret?" I demanded. "Did you think I'd be an asshole about it? I mean, thanks for the trust."
She blinked at me. "Because I was mad at myself. Ashamed, I guess. Oh, and because of Aura."
Oh.
Right.
The woman I'd set my sights on when Charis was out of reach.
Shit. How could I have forgotten that part of the equation?
Had my relationship with Aura bugged Charis?
Jealous … she said she'd been jealous.
Oh, shit, for years?
She was right, that wasn't hot, that was cringeworthy.
How many times had I kissed, caressed, hugged my girlfriend around Char?
Easy: from day one. From the very beginning. Probably each and every time the two women were in the same room.
Mel's words haunted me. Whenever you and Aura go at it, Charis always looks away.
I officially wanted to shoot myself.
And strangle Charis.
"You should have said up yours and left me to rot. Why the fuck didn't you? Why did you keep me around as a friend?"
"Because you were worth it," she said steadily. "When I ran into you on campus, every time I saw you, you were great-funny and honest and a really sweet person underneath all your ego talk. Not to mention part of my favorite family." She crossed her arms and stared down at the floor. "I have a lot of friends, I guess, but they're not like you. You understood me like nobody else. Your friendship was too important to me. It was worth it. Everything was worth it. If you'd married Aura, you'd never have known, we'd have grown old that way, and it would still have been worth it. You're special, Asher. There's nobody else like you."
Holy fuck.
She meant it.
Her words blew me away.
I stared at her. Now I didn't feel like a creep or an idiot. I felt like the luckiest man alive.
Charis had stuck with me because I was important to her.
It was the best gift anybody had ever given me in my life.
So maybe I wasn't that mad at her.
"I wish you'd shown some sign before she came into the picture." I made her face me. "I wanted you so bad."
She blinked. "Well, our age difference aside, I really didn't know that, did I? I thought I was like your sisters. That's how you treated me."
"I was following your lead, big sister," I said sternly.
"Whatever."
"You had plenty of chances to say something." I reminded her. "There was one night I'll always remember … "
She nodded. "Noises Off."
"So you remember that. Remember the box bag scene?"
She nodded. "We were both rolling on the floor laughing so hard."
"And I ended up on top of you. I was so fucking close to kissing you, girl."
"No, really?" She seemed stunned by that concept. "I thought it was just me. My wild imagination. I remember thinking I had to get you off me or I'd do something stupid. There might have been some word vomit," she mumbled.
"There was that. You started yammering about my sisters. And my mother. My mother, Char. Something about wondering if they synced their menstrual cycles." I saw Charis cringe. "Yeah, you managed to put a lid on things fairly well with that one."