Tripp (11 page)

“I’m sorry… I guess I thought if I had you, I wouldn’t want her so much. I would be content to be Rachel’s friend.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “God, I’m an asshole.”

“Yeah, you are. Did you ever think to just man up and tell her how you feel? Did you ever think of what it was doing to me—that I could tell you would rather be with her?”

“Did
you
ever think to just break up with me if you were so hurt?” I snapped. I can take blame when it’s mine to take. Right now, there are a lot of dumb decisions I have to own up for, but hearing Lauren place every piece on me was too much.

Yes, I’m a jerk. I dated you when I knew full well I loved someone else. But why did you let me?

Her face reddened and tears formed. She looked out the window and said she’d thought she could change my mind. “I just kept thinking you would walk into school one day and that would be the day you looked at me like you did freshman year—like I was a prize you’d just won. But you never did, and that makes me an idiot.”

There it was. The answer we both needed, however harsh. Lauren had been new and shiny and different—the girl who needed me. I chased her, dated her, and stayed with her when we both knew the girl
I
needed was just down the street from me.

“I wanted to be with you, Lauren. I liked what we had. It’s not enough anymore. I love Rachel—I think I’ve always loved her, and I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry I hurt you; sorry I didn’t man up earlier.”

She nodded and opened the door, throwing one last look over her shoulder. “I think we could have been happy, Tripp. You never gave us a fair chance.”

“She might be right,” I think out loud as I sit like a stalker watching Rachel’s house for any sign of movement. There’s a chance she went to Stacy’s, or Dean’s—
bastard
—or he came over here…
double bastard
. There’s also a chance she’s inside and won’t answer the door, which is why I haven’t texted her. I know if I’m going to get her to talk to me, it’s going to have to be a surprise attack. Rachel is nothing if not stubborn.

Taking a deep breath, I find my courage—buried deep in the back of my metaphorical closet, pushed behind jealousy, need, and idiocy. Nothing like having a full repertoire of responses. Grasping the flowers, I open the door to my truck and get out. I walk to her front door quickly so I can’t change my mind and opt for the “let’s talk” text, and invite rejection before I’ve told her everything I need to.

Knocking lightly, I wait for what seems like days; in reality, it might be thirty seconds. When my princess opens the door, she takes my breath away, but my reverie is cut short when she promptly tries to shut it. I slam my hand up in time, stopping the door from bashing my nose and hurting more than my pride, and I thrust the flowers forward, hoping she takes them as the peace offering they’re intended to be.

“I know you probably don’t do flowers,” I say, and wish for that dark hole to swallow me.
Hello, word-vomit, could you take off for a few hours? Give me this small period of time to try and make up with the girl in front of me—so when I tell her I love her, that’s actually how it comes out? Pretty please?

Let’s try again.

“Is your mom home?”

“No.” Nothing else. No softening of the eyes, no measuring of me, just a flat response and blank eyes. Stubborn, I tell you.

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Rachel, I’m sorry—” She cuts me off with a glare.

“What are you
sorry
for, Tripp? For calling me a whore?” Her words slap me. Oh sweet Jesus, is that what I did? Before I can gather myself and try and explain, she’s pushing on, her words so cold they chill me down to my marrow. “Or are you sorry for embarrassing me in front of my date? Who, by the way, wasn’t someone I met
tonight
like you implied. Or maybe you’re sorry for implying that because I’m a whore—who’s so easily seduced—I’m an unfit mother?” She strides forward and shoves me in the chest with enough force I have to take a step back or fall down. “Which of those offenses are you
sorry
for, Tripp?”

“It’s a pretty long list.”
Word-vomit
, you motherfucker.

She swears at me and goes to slam the door shut. Desperate, pissed at myself for what I did tonight—for what I didn’t do all of those nights ago when we first hooked up—I put my hand on the door and ask her to wait. She turns back to me, her eyes wide with hurt and anger and something else. It’s the
something else
that breaks me. I barely hear the words she says to me, but the second she mentions being a bad mom, I interrupt her.

“Rachel, stop.”

She steps back when I step forward. Even though I don’t call her on it, I recognize the gesture for what it is—avoidance, hurt, and protection. Rachel’s protecting herself from me, and I don’t blame her.

“You know I don’t think you’re a whore.” But she doesn’t. I can see it in her face. Memories from what I said tonight—along with all the other nights when I was frustrated with her for not taking better care of herself, or worrying about herself enough, or asking for more help—race through my mind until I’m certain there are other things she doesn’t know…thanks to this guy right here.

“I know how much you love Gracie…how much you do for her. It amazes me.”

I want to tell her everything she does astounds me. Every day she’s at school, busting her butt in classes, going to volleyball, racing to tournaments, and raising her kid—I watch her with sheer awe and respect. But I can’t because right now, she won’t hear it. Even if she does, she’ll think it’s a line in order to get her to forgive me.

She doesn’t forgive me. Instead, she asks me the one question I’m terrified to answer: “Why would you do that to me? Jesus, Tripp, those things you said? They hurt. Worse? The way you looked at me and made me feel like I deserved to be yelled at.”

My lungs are constricting. I feel the pain coming off her so strongly it reaches out and grabs me, making it damn near impossible for me to keep standing. “Oh, God, Rachel, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

They’re useless words and she calls me on them right away—not allowing me the time to derail the conversation and bring it somewhere else. Then she asks me again.

“You’ve already said that. It’s not enough. Why, Tripp? Why did you do that to me?”

This is how the beast is born. Right here, right now, staring at the girl I love—who knows me well enough to know there was a method to all of my asshole ways. I just hope she’s strong enough to take it.

“Because…you were with someone else!” The words rip from me, pouring up and over—a dam unblocked after years of buildup—flooding over and out, saturating everything around it for miles. “Because…you let him touch you, and hold you, and dance with you…I couldn’t stand it. It made me insane.”

I reach out, needing the contact with her as much as I need to purge myself of the words that have finally made their way from my mind to my lips. I tell her exactly why I went after her tonight—the pain eating at me while I watched her with Dean, the jealousy, the desire, the straight-up desire for her and
only her
. Then I lean forward so we’re sharing our breaths; the air she exhales I suck in, and I give her the largest truth of the night.

“I’ll kill the next guy who touches you. They don’t deserve you.”

Side note: when the girl you love isn’t afraid to take care of herself, don’t tell her
you’ll kill someone else for her
, because she’ll be determined to prove to you just how capable she is. Like Rachel, who promptly put her fist in my stomach the second after I spoke.

“You don’t get to decide who touches me and who doesn’t, Tripp. Not now, not ever. I can take care of myself.”

Challenge accepted.

Her statement is smug, as is her look. Even though I’m leaned over on my knees, sucking in air, my body begins to tingle with the knowledge of a fight.
Crying Rachel
brings me to my knees.
Aloof Rachel
makes me weary and unsure.
Fighter Rachel
? Her I understand. Her I can deal with.

Before she can get all the way past me, I snag her wrist, jolting her to a stop. Reams of satisfaction tingle through my body.

“That’s the second fucking time you’ve punched me tonight.”

Her eyes are slits as she responds to me while I straighten up from my bent over position. Goddamn it if my whole body isn’t throbbing in anticipation now. I know, sick bastard, but the electricity pulsing between us is causing my brain to short-circuit. My reason goes out the window—all I can see and smell and hear is Rachel as she throws the gauntlet.

“That’s the second fucking time you’ve pissed me off.” I squeeze her wrist to let her know I’m ready, and she goes in for the kill. “Let me go, or there’s going to be a third.”

I see her fist coming a mile away. With immense satisfaction, I snag it and twist, disabling her. Rachel isn’t thinking clearly because if she were, this move never would have happened. I have her hands captive behind her back, and the entire length of my front is molded to every inch of her back.
Holy hell
if I’m not turned on enough that my vision blurs.

“I can do this all night,” I whisper, and I can’t tell if she groans or growls at me, but—Holy. Fucking. Hot.

I’ve only been with one other girl in my life. What Rachel and I did that night so long ago? That was the most intense thing I’ve ever experienced. It was also the farthest I’d ever gone—not that I’ll tell her that. Lauren was saving herself until we said
I love you
. For some reason, no matter how badly I wanted to say those words just so she would let me touch her, I never did. Eventually, we slept together despite that. Though she said the words a time or two, I never reciprocated.

Now, though, I’m holding the words back. The things I did with Lauren feel like eons ago and I know it was never like this. This crackling, tingling anticipation has everything in me ready to break down and beg before I explode. When Rachel curves her back and my front molds closer to her, I go blind, deaf, and dumb. I forget who I am. All I can think about is the girl in my arms who’s molding herself to me—the same girl who is now making me see stars. Literally.

Rachel’s head slams into my face seconds after her foot crushes the top of mine. If it weren’t for the adrenaline moving through me, that move would have done more damage. As it is, I’m caught between admiration, pain, and laughter. She whirls on me with a fist; I snag it before she lands it on my nose. I use my body and my strength to pin her to the wall with her hands over her head. She struggles, and everything in my gets harder and harder until all I can think about is how she feels.

“You’re fucking insane.”

“Me?” she seethes. “You’re the lunatic who keeps manhandling me and calling me names—trying to tell me who I can
and can’t
hang out with.”

She tries to throw me off by arching her hips and thrusting; my entire brain shuts down. I think I tell her to stop, beg her to quit moving because what she’s doing is making it impossible for me to do anything but feel her.
Oh my God does she feel good
. There’s energy with Rachel I’ve only felt one other time—when she and I came together. It’s something tangible, a force that pulls at me until all I can feel and think and smell is her.

Just her. Rachel. Mine.

She asks me one last time to move, to get off her. Her voice is strained—not from effort, but need. Like me, she feels the energy between us. Unlike me, she isn’t ready to admit it. I can’t move away from her, can’t let her go, can’t do anything but tell her the truth right now: I need her like I’ve never needed anything, and I can’t walk away.

She’s stopped struggling now. Her breathing and mine are the only sounds. My forehead rests on hers, our eyes locked; in her, I see the same surrender I feel. Whether it’s actually there—or it’s what I want to see—I’m still not sure. I move closer, my cheek brushing hers as I skim her earlobe with my lips, inhaling her scent and taste.

“Don’t. Tripp, don’t. It’s not fair.”

In my head, I know she’s right. But touching her, feeling her respond to me—even when she’s not yet aware that she is—makes me need her in a way that’s so powerful it might rent me in two.

“Don’t
what
, Rachel? Don’t want you? Don’t touch you?” I move from her ear to her neck, tasting the skin all the way to her collarbone, worshipping her with my lips the way I’ve wanted to for what feels like forever—ever since that first unexpected night that changed my life. “It made me crazy when I saw him kiss you tonight. When you put your arms around him and kissed him back, I thought I was going to kill him.”

It’s the truth. I don’t know what I expect from her when I say it, but I have to tell her something—try and show her somehow what’s inside of me—but before I get the rest out, her lips are millimeters from mine; she’s no longer uncertain. She’s there to meet me, using her own lips to clash with mine. When she opens her mouth and allows my tongue access, I think I might die.

Christ Jesus, here she is—the girl I dreamt of even when I convinced myself I shouldn’t. She arches against me. I keep both of her hands cuffed over her head in one of mine while I allow the other hand to sweep down her body. I pause at the gentle curve of her breast before moving farther down over her long torso to her hip and thigh. Pulling her leg around my waist, I flex my hips into her, ripping groans from both of us.

I release her other hand because I need skin—the feel of her flesh warm and smooth and real beneath my hands. Wrapping her close, my hands under her shirt, I lose my mind when she hitches herself up and winds her legs around my waist.

I don’t remember leaving the front porch and getting us to her bedroom, don’t remember walking down the hall or closing doors; all I can remember is tasting her, feeling her, and hearing her sigh each time my tongue tangles with hers. Rachel, my Rachel, is finally beneath me and I didn’t know it could be like this.

I’ve had some pretty grand dreams in my eighteen years, but never have any of them come close to what I’m feeling now as I sweep her shirt off and fill my hands with her breasts; her fingers scrape and pull at the skin of my back. When I move lower to her nipples, I swear I could get high on the sound she makes.