Breakdown (Crash into Me) (26 page)

With a flirty smile in his eyes, William leaned back in his seat and ran a hand through his hair. Like before, his expression was harsh with something playful just beneath. “Have you looked in a mirror, Jumper?”

“Not since Tabby and I left.” I felt the power of narcissism as I pulled down the vanity mirror. How was he supposed to take me seriously with lipstick on my teeth or smeared mascara? Yet, judging by the glance I caught of myself, everything still seemed to be in place. “Why? Do I look even more ridiculous than I feel?”

“I’ve told you before you’re not ridiculous. I just, ah, given how I behaved the other day, I don’t trust myself to
just
kiss you.”

I laughed at his emphasis. It was rare that I was the strong one in a situation. “What if I kissed you?”

“You shouldn’t,” he cautioned. “I don’t think I’d be able to handle it. I almost lost control the last time.”

“How about you stop being such a do-gooder and shut up?”

Just as he opened his mouth to protest, I leaned over the gearshift and reached for his neck, linking my fingers just under his mop of messy hair. And when our lips touched, it was instant electricity, surges of energy flowing through the center of us and out again. Just like static electricity, we stuck to each other, clinging onto each sliver of flesh we could get our hands on.

“Definitely not a good idea,” he whispered.

I was still giggling when he started again. And without taking his lips from mine, William unbuckled my seatbelt, giving us both better access to each other. Once I was freed from my restraint he pulled me into his arms, kissing me with even more urgency than before and running his hand over the exposed flesh of my back and rubbing his thumb over my knee. Newly free and unencumbered, I breathed as much of him in as I could, that spicy smell of his aftershave and deodorant making him smell as great as he felt.

Every time we parted for breath he’d shake his head at himself and reach for the ignition. “I’m sorry, we should… go.”

“Well, I’m not,” I said, pulling him closer. “So if you apologize one more time I’ll key your car.”

Though flushed, William’s face broke out into a smile. “I think you might really mean that, Jumper.”

“Good” I laughed. “Because I do”

His laugh just before he kissed my forehead was soft and sweet. “I should take you back to your house. I’m sure you wanna change—”

But the thought of returning to my parent’s house was completely unappealing, pulling the strings of that depression I thought I had left behind. I shook my head to make it clear I was against the idea.

“Okay” he laughed. “The guys and I were gonna meet for a celebration beer—”

“No,” I told him fiercely. “I want to be with you—just you.” The change in his expression faltered just a little, a look of disbelief crossing over his face as I gripped his shoulders. “I-Is that okay?”

“Are you kidding?” he said, kissing my forehead again. “That’s what I was
hoping
you’d say.”

I slid back into my seat and rebuckled my seatbelt. Then, as soon as he started the car back up, I rolled down my window, feeling a haunting giddiness at the realization that we had literally steamed up the windows. Grinning wildly, he did the same before shifting into gear. When he wasn’t shifting, his hand rested on my seat—no more than an inch away from thigh. Silently, I gave him the permission I thought he wanted to touch me. The fact that he didn’t was infuriating and gratifying at the same time.

Chapter Sixteen

Once we were in his apartment I was once again the aggressor, all but forcing him to kiss me the second the door was closed behind us. All smiles, William responded accordingly, guiding my mouth with his and kissing me back with just the right amount of intensity.

I closed my arms around him—as much as I could anyway—wishing I could climb inside of him and absorb all he had to offer. My consolation prize instead was the taste of his sweet breath. I knew there was nothing rational about it, but I accepted it anyway, thinking of the syrup deity we had once joked about. Unlike the Lord of Maple, however, William’s kisses had a honey flavor to them. Inspired, I tried to tangle my hand in his hair, slightly surprised that he scooped me up in his arms completely to make it that much easier for me. Only there for a moment, he carried me to the bedroom as if we were newlyweds.

To my slight shock, his bedroom wasn’t nearly as messy as the rest of his place. In fact, a perfectly made bed was against the wall below a print of a convertible. I made a combination of a giggle and snorting noise at the sight of it and tried to brush the hair from my eyes. 

“Obviously you entertain more in here than the rest of your place.”

While it wasn’t intended to be unpleasant, he pulled away from me and went to sit on the bed.

“Is that what you think?” He bounced where he sat, the grin never leaving his face. “That I
entertain
a lot?”

“Well…” I looked him up and down. “Don’t you?”

William shook his head, lasting only a second before he laughed again. “Okay,” he admitted. “So maybe more than average…”

I rolled my eyes, picking up another family photo before placing it facedown. Whatever we were about to do, I didn’t want the faces of William’s family to bear witness to it. “That’s what I thought.”

“I haven’t been with anyone since I met you.”

He said it seriously enough, but the memory of the pretty girl he was chatting it up with a week into meeting him pushed its way into my memory.

“How could I?” he said, as if reading my mind. “You’ve haunted me from the moment I saw you.”

The intensity of his words made my throat feel dry, but the idea of leaving him to do something as mediocre as hydrate myself seemed as ridiculous as he claimed me not to be.

“I know exactly what you mean.”

Still standing, I kissed him, the change in position even better than I expected. Then, when his hands—expert in everything it seemed—snuck their way slowly around to my backside, I gasped inside of his mouth, feeling his swollen lips smile against mine. Not particularly experienced in kissing, I considered for an instant opening my eyes to look at him, but opted instead to feel the features I wanted to see. I let go of the hair I had tangled in my hands and worked them into the intense muscles of his shoulders, easily unbuttoning his navy blue dress shirt while he took off the jacket he had leant me. I breathed him in and kissed harder.

But a switch was flipped when William moved to lift me up and lay me on the bed, something broke inside of me. It was difficult to explain how I felt just then. I had liked being in control, calling the shots. Yet the kisses on my neck and the gentle nuzzling of his nose were equally as wonderful. So why was my chest so tight?  I knew William would never hurt me, trusted him like he trusted me, yet when he leaned over me panic emerged from a place within—a place I had been trying to forget for almost two years.

Instantly, my mouth went to form the word “no” but couldn’t, my mind telling me to reject the lust I felt while my heart wanted that and so much more.

“A-are you still with me, Jumper?”

I shook my head violently, letting the tears spring up when they pricked my eyes. “No,” I whispered fiercely. “No, I’m not.”

He was off me in an instant, his rough hands near me as if expecting a fall of some kind. It came then too, just as he predicted, and I curled up against myself, pulling my knees up to my chest as if I could disappear inside of myself.

Cautious, and clearly startled by this behavior, William reached out for me slowly, letting his hand only touch the crook of my elbow.

“It’s okay, Jumper, you don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.”

Immediately after he uttered the words, I lived up to my nickname, changing my position to jump up and burrow myself in his arms. Still cautious, he accepted me there, cradling me to his chest as if I were an infant. I felt just as powerless as I suspected he did, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying, from letting out what seemed like months’ worth of tears.

Waiting patiently, William held me close and remained silent until I had cried out what felt like every last bit of me and hiccupped for a solid five minutes. Eventually, he opened his mouth to speak, closing it again before speaking.

“I’d apologize,” he whispered in my ear. “But I’m afraid for my car.”

Laughing brought on the hiccups again, though this time they did not last long. I pulled my face away, wiping my tears with embarrassment. When my eyesight refocused it was made painfully clear to me the mess I’d left behind. My tears and eye makeup had seeped into the fabric of his shirt and parts of his bare chest. I grimaced and looked at my hand. Sure enough, my hand was covered with the fine black lines that had once been around my eyes.

“No.” I shut my eyes tight and turned away. Though why I tried to maintain any semblance of dignity went against all my remaining logic. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Your shirt—” I hiccupped and drew a deep breath. At that moment though his laugher wasn’t as comforting as it usually was. “I thought I was ready for this,” I said after I exhaled. “Parts of me
are
ready for this, I just… I don’t know.”

“What is it you don’t know?” He reached for me, for the hair that had come undone in our struggle, but I flinched away, and I couldn’t stand to see the look of hurt I knew I’d see there. “D-did I do something?”

“No!” Ridiculous looking or not, I turned back to him, startled and even more alarmed at the look on his face than he clearly was at mine. His sadness called for me to redeem myself, and I rushed to do just that. “I-It’s just the last time I—it wasn’t under the most pleasant of circumstances.”

Without asking me to, I told him everything. I told him about how the only boy I ever liked tried to get me to sleep with him a week into dating, how he was telling all of his friends he already had, bragging about it on every social media site he had. I told William about how I spent the last weeks of high school avoiding stares and whispers from my classmates and how oblivious I was about my damaged reputation. I even started telling him about the night my virginity was taken, about how I didn’t know my drink had been spiked…

As it was, however, I choked out, started crying again, and had to stop. I couldn’t remember much from that night, but what I could remember was pain. I managed to tell William that before his angry glare also cut me off.

“He forced you?”

“No. Yes? Not exactly,” I admitted. “I don’t know.”

He stared away from me, hard and intense.

“Where is he now?”

I thought the question was a little strange, but was so overwhelmed by the sound of how edgy his voice was that I didn’t think to question it.

“Texas A&M—I think, anyway,” I added. “He broke up with me a week later and we haven’t exactly kept in touch—”

“No. Don’t tell me anymore.” William gripped the ends of his bedpost until his fists were white. “I shouldn’t have even asked.”

“No. I’m sorry
. I
shouldn’t have thrown all my problems at you.”

William scoffed. “It isn’t that. It’s not that at all, Jumper. I’m just afraid that if I know any more about this asshole it’ll make him that much easier to find. I’m not exactly a violent person, but—”

This time, it was my turn to cut him off. “You don’t trust yourself?”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

Returning to our normal awkwardness, I slipped myself back inside his jacket. It seemed silly considering William had seen me straight down to the bone and back, but I still felt comfortable concealed.

“You know that kind of situation isn’t your fault, right? That any man who has to force a woman is no man at all?”

I scoffed and picked up one of the bobby pins that had fallen out of my hair. “Is that something your sisters instilled in you?”

He answered without hesitation. “Anybody with half a brain knows that, Jumper. He should have known that too. That’s why it’s not your fault.”

The sentiment behind the fact made me sniffle even as fresh tears pricked my eyes. I bit my lip to make it stop and tasted William there instantly.

“For the record though, Cora was a feminist for a while. Bridget was too…”

The mention of his lost sister made me forget my own self-loathing long enough to think about the other issue that weighed my mind. Just from the way William trailed off about his sister was enough to assure me something unfortunate had probably happened to her. But what if a simple attempt to indulge my curiosity offended him in some way an only child couldn’t understand? I unclasped another bobby pin and set it in my collection on the nightstand next to us. When I did, however, William reached up and twirled the new found loose curl around his finger. That simple display of affection was enough to tell me William would still care for me, no matter what I asked. 

“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” I kept my voice cautious after I swallowed my dry throat. “About the way she—”

His sigh cut me off. “I wish Tabby would mind her own business for once.”