Feel the Rush: A Hard Feelings Novel (InterMix) (23 page)

He saw it all. All the hurt she was hiding, and he wanted to fucking drain the pain from her eyes.

Her hands wound under his arms and locked around his back as he hovered over her. Her legs lifted and she wrapped them around his waist.

“Please,” she whimpered.

He searched her face, every line, every crease. He didn’t know why she was hurting, he only knew she was. He didn’t know the words that she struggled to say, but he had a damn good idea.

His forehead fell to the curve of her shoulder and she pressed her cheek against his head. Then he slammed into her.

Her back arched off the bed and her nails pierced his shoulders as a sharp gasp left her mouth. He pulled back, then thrust again. He wanted to go slow, he wanted to feel every warm muscle in her pussy clamp around him as he slid inside her, and he wanted to feel her grip onto his dick as he slid back out.

But he didn’t.

She needed this. For whatever reason was mudding up her beautiful mind, she needed this from him—and if she needed it, he would give it to her.

His hips rocked back then rammed into her over and over. Each thrust harder than the last, each roll of his hips deeper than before.

He raised to his knees then lifted her ass, her legs draping over his shoulders. She cried out as he continued his rhythm, and each grateful moan that rolled from her lips made him fill her harder, deeper.

Her hands clawed at the sheets, dug into his arms, clung onto his thighs. She was spiraling.

“Oh god . . .” She sighed as her body started to quicken and tighten around him.

He stopped.

Her eyes fluttered opened and fell on his. Her mouth tightened into a line as she inhaled a shaky breath, then squeezed her eyes shut.

Dropping her legs to the side, Reed lowered, sinking down on top of her. “Look at me, baby.”

Her eyes opened, and a single tear made a path down her hot cheeks as they looked into his.

Then he kissed her.

His mouth saturated her with need. His lips tangled with hers and her tongue brushed his, evading him. Her kiss pleaded with him—he devoured her as her hands cradled his face, and a broken sigh vibrated from her lips and hummed in his mouth.

Reed lifted his hips, slowly pulling his cock back, then just as slowly, he inched back inside her until she couldn’t take anymore of him. Then he did it again.

And again.

Her teeth tugged on his bottom lip as a forceful palpitation rocked him. She clung to his shoulders, rising her body off the mattress, their kiss never breaking. Her body tightened around him one last time, then she fell back onto the mattress, and he collapsed on top of her. Their breaths and sighs mingled and mixed between them in a thick aroma of sex . . . and desperation.

That was what he needed. To bring her to that edge and make her free-fall over the side with him.

***

Reed rolled to the side and pulled her against his chest, a thin layer of moisture clinging to their skin. He leaned down and kissed her forehead and she inwardly sighed at the way his lips felt—sweet, easy, right . . .

“Reed—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted.

She started to pull away but he tightened his arm around her. “Don’t.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. He held her eyes, a long, pained stare emitting from his brown eyes, the flecks of gold bleeding into the green rim as a layer of glaze covered the surface.

Realization slapped her hard. “You know.”

“I feel you pulling away, yes.”

She sat up, and he let her. His arms dropped like dead weights against the mattress as she pulled herself against the headboard and covered up with the sheet. “I need things you’re not ready to give me,” she blurted.

A switch seemed to flick and the gentle Reed who was holding her only a heartbeat ago, transformed. He sat up and flung his legs over the side of the bed, his back to her.

“And you already knew all this about me, Meagan.” He stood and pulled on his jeans, which were laying on the floor.

“Reed, I’m not willing to risk it. I need to leave before my heart won’t let me.” Her voice was weak, almost unsure, and when the sound of her plea—a plea to herself—met her ears, a weight she hadn’t felt in a really long time, eight years to be exact, smothered her.

Reed whipped around to face her, his arms flailing out at his sides. “And what about my heart, huh? What, you just fucking used me as your goddamned stepping-stone until your future husband comes knocking at your door? What? Tell me, Meg! What was running through your head when you wrapped your arms around me and told me you wanted a go at this? Because I sure as fuck don’t know anymore!” he yelled, the anger in his voice rolling over her, coating her with an extra layer of guilt.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought maybe you would—”

“That I would what?” Fear washed over her as he stepped around the bed, his strides urgent—determined. It wasn’t a fear that he would hurt her—not physically, but a fear that he would break her, that his pain and his words would destroy her.

He placed his hands on the mattress on either side of her and leaned in close, his ambrosial breath bouncing off her lips. His voice lowered, and she almost wished he was still yelling, because the rich control he inflicted in his tone was much worse. “Change?” He got even closer—she swallowed hard. “Become the man you always wanted?”

She was trapped between him and the headboard, his arms caging her in. “Yes! Okay, yes! I thought that maybe I would be worth it, that maybe you would see the life I wanted and see it for you too—see it for us!” She blinked slowly and sighed. “That your plans would change.”

Reed’s hands lifted and he scrubbed them over his face as he spun around and walked towards his window. She quickly pulled her dress over her head and stood up.

“You heard what I said to Murano?” She nodded and his head fell between his shoulders. “You
are
fucking worth it, Meg. You’re worth that and more.” He faced her again. “I told you I couldn’t promise you those things.” His hands ripped through his hair. “Dammit! Don’t you think I want to give you everything you deserve someday? I just . . . I don’t . . . you need to give me time.”

She felt the assurance she built up start to shrink. It was happening—his words were crushing her. But in the back of her mind, when she shoved the throbbing ache in her chest aside, she knew she had to do this. She couldn’t let history repeat itself. “I can’t, Reed. You don’t know if there will ever be a someday for you, and that’s okay. But I don’t want to fall any harder. I don’t want to learn down the road that you still don’t see the future I see.” She paused, her next words, words she had never said to him, were stuck in her mouth, which had suddenly gone dry. She swallowed hard. “I love you too much.”

Her breath hitched as he took a single stride toward her, his step nearly completely closing the space between them. His body was a sliver away from touching her. If she inhaled too deeply, she would press against him.

He didn’t reach out, he didn’t touch her; he just stood there, staring at her like he could see straight to her heart. She closed her eyes, fighting back the sob that was working its way up her throat. “It would hurt too much,” she whispered. “I don’t want to hope that I will be enough for you, that I will be the one you want forever with.” She opened her eyes.

“Don’t do this, Meg. You know how I feel about you.”

She knew he cared about her, she could see it flicker in his eyes, and she could feel how much he was hurting at that very moment. But it didn’t matter. Reed was a wild card. He lived life with no expectations, and if she stayed—if she let herself fall any more than she already had, she would break. She knew what it felt like to love someone so fiercely that your life intertwined and locked into theirs. That when you saw the future, you saw them. She’d had that. She’d felt that. Then she felt the earth crack and crumble beneath her feet when that future was ripped from her heart. When Daniel broke her heart . . .

She couldn’t give Reed that chance. She loved him too much to hate him if he broke her heart. Hating him would be worse than never having him.

She inhaled a shaky breath then took a step back. The back of her knees hit the bed. “I know how you feel about me, Reed. But it’s not enough.”

“So you’re cutting out early because you’re scared.” He wasn’t asking her, he was telling her. . . .

“I’m not—”

He hovered over her as he leaned in. His hands fell to her shoulders, lightly brushing them down her arms until they reached her fingers. Lacing them together, he rested his forehead to hers and whispered, “You are. Sometimes, baby, the things that scare us the most are the things that give us the biggest rush.”

She yanked her hands from his. “I don’t want a rush.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Meagan should have known better. She knew loving a man like Reed would end in a sob fest and a broken heart. She just didn’t realize she would be the one to cause it.

“Knock, knock,” Eva said, pushing Meagan’s bedroom door open. “How ya doing?”

“Well, all things considered, horrible,” she said, wiping away the puddle that lingered under her eyes.

“Ah, babe. What can I do? Shot? Want me to go score you some medicinal marijuana? We can get stoned out of our minds like seventeen-year-olds and binge on Rocky Road and Merlot. Well, you can get stoned, I will just get drunk.”

Meagan laughed. “Ugh, that surprisingly sounds incredibly tempting. But I’m just going to go to bed. I feel like death.”

“A broken heart will do that to ya.”

Harry jumped up on her bed and climbed onto her stomach, using her boobs as a kneading cushion. She scratched the top of his head. “Crazy cat lady,” she mumbled as another pathetic tear found its way down the worn path on her cheek.

“You are not . . . it’s . . . you . . . ugh!” Eva threw her hand up in surrender. “I give up, babe. Try to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

***

Avoiding Reed over the next two weeks was easier than she thought. She fully expected to go back to their uncomfortable attempt at friendship. She’d assumed he would wave to her or try his usual flirty greetings—but nothing. She never saw him. She would occasionally hear his bike roar to life at the butt crack of dawn when he was heading to work, and she would occasionally hear him out in the courtyard with Tiny, but that was it. Her friend, the guy who made her smile and laugh—more often driving her crazy—checked out of her life. But whose fault was that? Hers. She couldn’t have her cake and eat it too. Damn, she hated that expression, but it was true. You couldn’t hold onto something after you had just let it go. It didn’t work that way.

Plopping down at the nurses’ station, Meagan lifted her feet onto the small ledge that ran the length under the desk.

“Hey, aren’t you off?” Zoe asked, leaning over the top of the desk.

“Yes, but I’m so tired I just had to sit.”

“Well, get your butt home and crawl into bed with a glass of wine—that will do the trick.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” She stood up and all the blood rushed to her head and she braced her hands on the side of the desk as her vision darkened around the corners.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I think so,” she said, standing back up.

Zoe eyed her, unconvinced. “Text me when you get home so I know you made it okay.”

“Will do. See you next week.”

***

“Pass over the Doritos, man,” Murano said as he turned onto the highway.

Reed reached to the floorboard in the backseat of the jeep and grabbed the half-empty bag of chips, tossing them onto Murano’s lap.

He shoved a handful of broken chips into his mouth. “Thanks for coming with me,” he said around another mouthful.

“It’s no problem. You need this closure, man. I’m glad you’re finally ending it for good.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t play Bridgette’s fucking mind games anymore. It’s tearing me up.”

“It’s tearing up your liver.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that too.” He tilted the bag toward Reed, offering him some chips that were more than likely two months stale, but Reed dug his hand in anyway. “What about you?” Murano asked.

“What about me?”

Static seeped through the speakers and Murano pressed the button on his steering wheel, shifting through every bubble-gum station until he finally stopped on a good country song. “You have your closure?” he asked, taking a drink of his Mountain Dew

“I’m pretty sure I got my closure when she looked me in the eyes and told me I wasn’t enough.”

“But she told you she loved you?”

He laughed once. “Yeah.”

“Women, I swear,” he said after a heavy sigh heaved from his chest.

“But she was right.”

Murano shifted his eyes to Reed for a moment before looking back at the road. “Says who?”

“Says me. I’m not ready for the things she wants. Not a chance in hell. And who the fuck am I to keep her from them?”

“I feel like you’re talking in code, man. Keep her from what?”

“That happily-ever-after shit.”

He nodded his understanding, although Reed knew that if Bridgette gave Murano the chance, he would marry her, play the stepdad role with pride, and probably create some dark-skinned spawn of his own—and he wouldn’t blink a fucking eye about it either.

“But you love her?” he asked.

Reed kept his eyes on the gray asphalt that stretched before them. “Yeah, I love her.”

He loved her, and he hadn’t even realized it until the words had left his mouth. Which was exactly why he needed to just let her go.

***

The door slammed shut, causing Meagan’s heavy lids to flutter open. She was sprawled out on the couch, her jean shorts laying on the floor, her cotton-panty-ass facing the ceiling, her forehead pressed into the leather and a small trace of drool on the corner of her mouth.

She had come home and died, falling asleep like she hadn’t slept in days.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Meagan startled awake at the sound of Eva’s bitching. Stretching her body like she was doing the downward dog in yoga class or something, she eventually sat up. “I fell asleep.”

“In your panties?”

“I was hot.”

“What if I’d had Luke with me or something?”

“Then he would have gotten a nice show of my granny panties, what’s with the third degree?”

“You’re awful snappy today, princess.” She set a large paper bag down on the counter.

“Sorry, I’m just tired.” She yawned, moping her way off the couch and into the kitchen.

“Well, are you hungry?”

She sat down on the stool in front of the bar. “Yes.”

Reaching in the paper bag, Meagan pulled out a foil container of her favorite meal—an overstuffed burrito. The smell of grilled chicken and onions smothered in queso assaulted her nose and her hand instantly flew to her mouth as she stumbled off the stool and made a mad-dash to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet in time before she doubled over—and puked.

Eva ran to the doorway, her lip curling and her nose wrinkling as she recoiled and turned away from the bathroom. “Are you okay?” she asked on the verge of a gag.

Meagan lifted her head from the toilet and flushed. “Yes,” she said, her words muffled as the back of her fingers ran across her mouth.

Turning on the water, she leaned down and ran her mouth under the faucet in the hopes of rinsing the aftertaste from her tongue, but all it did was make it worse.

“I think I’ve got the flu.”

Eva turned back around, her face still a little pale. She was such a sympathy-puker. “I think you’re pregnant.”

Meagan’s panicked eyes flashed to Eva, who was as serious as a heart attack. “No . . .”

She wasn’t . . . was she?

“I should be starting . . .” Her head lifted toward the ceiling and her lips moved silently as she counted backward.

“You should have started shortly after your Florida trip. You’re always a week after me,” Eva cut in, interrupting her panicked attempt at counting backward from twenty-eight.

“Oh my god, Florida.”

Meagan rushed to her bedroom and pulled a pair of yoga pants from her bottom drawer.

Eva followed. “What?”

“I forgot to take my pill the night we got home from Florida,” she said as she pulled the black cotton up over her hips. “I was exhausted and worried about . . .”

“The break-up?”

She nodded. “Oh god, Eva. I didn’t even realize it until I went to take my pill the next night, so I doubled up. That’s happened to me before. Hasn’t it happened to you? You forgot to take your pill so you just doubled up the next day?

“Well, yeah, but—”

She sat down on the edge of her bed. “I slept with him that day.” Her eyes widened as she stared up at Eva, who was standing surprisingly calm in front of her.

“When?”

“The night we broke up. Oh my god, Eva. I’m two weeks late. Is it even possible to get pregnant that close to your cycle?”

“Do you need Sex Ed 101?”

Her shoulders slumped and her neck jutted out as she widened her eyes at Eva. “Be serious,” she snapped.

“Did you have sex?”

“Yes.”

“Money shot?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s very possible.”

Eva tossed Meagan her flip-flops that were on the floor. “Didn’t you notice you were late when you went to start a new pack?”

She stood up and slipped her toes between the thin rubber straps. “I never refilled. My mind’s just been elsewhere.”

Eva gave her a knowing glance and locked her arm around Meagan’s. “I know, babe. Come on, let’s go get you a test before we start freaking.”

They walked out the door and started toward Eva’s truck. She realized that normal women would be bawling their eyes out at that very moment if they thought they might be pregnant by a man they just broke up with, but the very thought that she might have a tiny little life growing inside her was enough to keep the tears away.

As she passed Reed’s apartment, she paused, and the first ounce of sadness reached her. She should be rushing off to the store with him, she should be jumping up and down, sharing this possible happiness with him—but she couldn’t.

***

Two giant glasses of water and four pregnancy tests later, Meagan sat on the edge of the bathtub, staring at four identical double lines—officially pregnant.

“You gonna call him?” Eva asked, sitting on the counter next to the sink.

Her eyes never left the white sticks that lined the linoleum floor in front of her feet. She was afraid, no, she wasn’t afraid, she was terrified. A faint nausea came over her—but it wasn’t the pregnancy, it was her nerves. All she seemed to do was go back to that night—that night eight years ago when the man she loved took her world and flattened it between his hands along with everything she thought was true, along with her future.

And now she was faced with the extreme reality that it was going to happen all over again. She knew Reed didn’t want this, that he wasn’t ready for this—ready to settle down with a family—and she needed to prepare herself for that. If she could, then maybe she could brace against the destruction that would claim her heart.

She inhaled a deep breath, then let it out slowly, lifting her head. “Yeah, I’m gonna call him.”

***

This gas station should had been condemned. Reed could piss anywhere, but he wasn’t about to get his dick within aiming distance of that fucking urinal. It had shit growing on it that hadn’t even been discovered yet. Not to mention the entire place smelled like it was the inside of an overflowing Porta-John in the dead of summer. He lifted the crook of his arm to his nose and backed out.

The setting sun glared off of his sunglasses as he walked back toward the jeep. “Don’t fucking go in there.”

“Why? Don’t be a pansy—it can’t be that bad.” Murano said, tossing Reed the keys as he put the cap back on his gas tank.

“I’m telling you, man, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He hopped in behind the wheel as Murano shrugged and headed toward the bathroom.

His phone vibrated against his thigh and he dug his hand in his pocket, retrieving it. The picture that popped up on the screen stalled his heart. The blond waves that were blowing across her face and the way her nose was scrunched up as her lips perked together, blowing a kiss, sent a longing through him that he was trying desperately to shut out.

It was Meagan.

Clearing his throat, he pressed the accept button and lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello,” he said, sounding a little more excited to hear from her than he would have liked.

“Hey, Reed. Uh . . . it’s Meagan.” The nervous hitch in her voice caught him by surprise, but it made him smile anyway.

“I know, sugar.”

She sighed.

“You okay?” he asked when she didn’t respond.

“Yeah. No, I’m fine. How are you?”

She wanted to know how he was? What the hell? They lived next door to each other and she hadn’t spoken to him once in the last two weeks and now she wanted to call to see how he was? He might not understand it, but he sure as shit was happy she called. Her voice alone damn near brought him to his knees, and if he wasn’t sitting down, it probably would have.

“I’m good.”

“Good. Um, I was hoping we could talk.” There was that nervous crack in her words again and he could picture her twirling a lock of her hair from her nape around her finger. God, he missed her.

He smiled. “We can talk anytime. All you have to do is call, or hell, stop by.”

“Okay.” Relief flooded her voice. “Would now be a good time to pop over?”

“Damn, you weren’t fucking lying,” Murano said, coughing as he climbed into the jeep. Reed shot him a shut-the-fuck-up glance.

“I’m out of town now, sugar. I’ll be back tomorrow night, though. I can stop by when I get back if you want.”

“Okay, yeah.”

There was a pause, a silence between them that for the first time since he had known her was awkward. He felt that she wanted to say more, so he sat there in silence letting her work through it.

“Talk to you then?” she finally said. He was slightly disappointed, hell, more than slightly. He hadn’t heard her voice in fourteen long-ass days and he wasn’t ready to hang up, especially when he could tell something was off.

“Sounds good.”

She sighed and he could feel the smile that she had pulled across her face through the phone. “Bye, Reed.”

He had the urge to call her
baby
, to let the word roll from his lips, to let her know that he still needed her that way, but he didn’t.

He shut his phone and pulled the jeep out of the gas station.

Murano propped his feet upon the dashboard. “Who was that?”

“Meg.”

“Yeah? What did she want?”

Reed’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, suddenly anxious. If it wasn’t for Murano, he would have whipped a U-ey and would already be on his way back to Benning. “Hell, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her in two weeks.”