This position has my pussy clenching around him, my breasts swaying as he thrusts experimentally. He presses his mouth to the back of my neck, breathing against my hair as he fucks into me. He tangles one of his hands in mine, pressing it flat against the bed.
“I’m close already,” he whispers against my skin. “I can’t help myself when it comes to you.”
“Come,” I whisper back. “Fill me up.”
He snaps his hips forward, coming inside me with a moan. I squeeze around him, helping him through it, loving the way his breath hitches and he tightens his grip on my hand. He rolls us onto our sides and rubs my clit until I come again with a weak cry.
We both catch our breath, panting, for a long moment. There’s a strange feeling inside my chest, a balloon of pressure that I can’t make go away. Maybe it’s because of how he looks at me as he comes back from discarding the condom with a washcloth in hand to clean me up. Or maybe it’s how he kisses me, his hand cradling my jaw. Or how he pulls his sweater over my head the moment I begin to shiver. The food is here, and I watch as he sets up everything, pouring us each more champagne.
I’m feeling something I don’t want to name, even in my mind, because it scares me too badly. Especially after what Darryl told me.
James Callahan has infiltrated my heart.
27
JAMES
When I wake up, Bex is staring down at me.
She’s holding her new camera, and she has a cute look of concentration on her face, teeth digging into her lower lip. She’s still wearing my sweater and her hair is messy, and my heart clenches at the sight.
Last night, something shifted. It’s been shifting ever since the diner, drawing me closer to her with inexorable sureness. I looked down at her, saw her flushed cheeks and the desire in her gorgeous eyes, and I almost said something I promised my father I wouldn’t tell a girl again for a long time.
And now I have the urge to say it again, so instead I grin, winding my hand around her calf. “Hope you got my good side.”
She tucks her hair behind her ear. “The natural light is so good right now.”
I kiss her knee. “And?”
“And you’re a handsome subject,” she says. “But James, this camera!”
I sit up on one elbow. “It’s good?”
“It’s amazing.” She looks down at it with a cute little smile. “Thank you. I still can’t believe you did this for me.”
“Bex?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m no photography judge, but I know you’re talented. You should be pursuing this, not resigning yourself to the diner.”
I know the moment the words leave my mouth that I pushed when I shouldn’t have. She sets down the camera, a faraway look in her eyes. I brace myself for her to rebuke me—because even though my girl is starting to accept my help, the diner is a sore subject for her—but instead, she asks something that floors me.
“Who’s Sara Wittman?”
I sit up, heart jackhammering in my chest. “What did you say?”
“Sara Wittman,” she says. “Was she your girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Babe, how did you…”
She presses her lips together. “Tell me what happened with her. Tell me the real reason why you came to McKee.”
I know that she’s asking me something reasonable—she’s my girlfriend, she deserves to know about my past—but the part of me that still wants to protect Sara rebels against it. I haven’t spoken to her since that day in the hospital, but she still echoes in my mind from time to time. I loved her. I thought I was going to marry her one day.
“James,” Bex says, a note of urgency in her voice.
I scrub my hand through my hair. “We met last year,” I say. “She was a freshman, and her father was involved with the team, so I met her at a function at the beginning of the season. I asked her out, and I’d dated other girls before, but this was different.”
I don’t like the way Bex curls in on herself, but she keeps looking at me, so I force myself to keep going.
“Sara is an intense person,” I say. “Pretty soon we were spending all our time together. She didn’t like to be alone, and I sort of became her person, you know? She came to all my practices. We practically lived together; I had an apartment off-campus that she stayed in. And it worked, for a while. Maybe it was stupid, but I assumed we were going to get married, so why wouldn’t I want to spend all my time with her?”
Bex plays with my fingers. “And then?”
I swallow. “And then she didn’t want me hanging out with the guys from the team. Whenever I went to an away game she couldn’t go to, she called me until I picked up. I kept blowing off assignments to be with her, and eventually practices. Whenever I tried to give us some distance, she clung tighter. She said she had to come first.”
Bex’s eyes widen slightly, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Coach gave me some leeway at first, because of the goodwill I’d built up over my first two years there. But I was failing two of my classes after mid semester, including the writing one, and according to school policy, that meant I had to be benched.”
“Were you?”
I shut my eyes briefly. “No. We worked out a deal that I would make up the work I missed and come in for extra practices to prep for the postseason. And to make that work, I told Sara that we needed to cool things down for a while. Just until the end of the season.” I look at Bex, tracing my thumb over her knuckles. “I didn’t break up with her, but she took it that way. And I hadn’t realized how fragile she was. She kept saying she was fine with it, but she spiraled.”
“Spiraled how?”
“She stopped going to class. She blew off her job working at the student center. She’d always been a bit of a party girl, but she started drinking during the day and taking pills.”
Bex’s eyes widen further. “What?”
“I tried to ignore her calls because I wanted to set boundaries. I had no idea she was hurting so badly. Not until she called me the night before the last game of the season and told me she was going to—”
I break off, my voice cracking. I’d never been as terrified as the moment I heard her voice. The panic in it still turned my stomach over.
“No,” Bex says softly.
“She cut herself.” I swallow hard. “By the time I got there, she’d already done it. She was passed out, and I couldn’t wake her up. I tried the whole time I was waiting for the ambulance.”
My eyes are burning. I blink, trying to prevent the tears from coming. Bex crowds closer, winding her arms around me. I hook my chin over her shoulder. It’s easier to talk like this.
“I missed the game. I didn’t want to be away from her, not for a second and not for an entire football game. But the team lost, of course, the backup quarterback hadn’t played at all.” I squeeze Bex, shuddering in a breath. “And I didn’t want the news about Sara to become public because of me. So, when the media asked why I missed the game, I made it seem like I blew it off. Like I was irresponsible, and it had nothing to do with her.”
Bex pulls back to look at me. “Oh, James.”