Faster We Burn (Fall and Rise #2)(34)
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron

“Bye, Stryker. Thanks for the coffee.” She touched my shoulder and then turned away and left. I stood there, watching her go, and realizing I could never, ever be just friends with her.

***

Ric sent several more threatening messages, but I ignored them. She was just waiting for me to lash out, which is what I normally would have done in a situation like this. She’d known me for long enough to know my patterns.

Trish showed up at my apartment again, saying that she’d had a fight with her roommate, but I knew it was because she was checking up on me.

“You know, we could always push her down the stairs,” she said, looking up from her homework. I was busy writing a paper, so I didn’t hear her right away.

“Push who down the stairs?”

“Ric,” she said, closing her book with a snap. “You know, just to scare her a little.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’d get arrested for that, and I’d rather not, thank you.”

“It was just a suggestion.”

“Why do you care so much?”

She made a sound as if I was being a moron for not being able to read her mind.

“Because I don’t want evil to triumph over good, and Ric is pure evil.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Trish. I think you’re being a little overdramatic.”

“I don’t think I am. Can you imagine how much it’s going to hurt Katie right now if she finds out? She’s my friend. My concern for her can never be dramatic enough.”

Trish didn’t make friends easily, she never had. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her get so close with someone before. Her pattern was to push people away with sarcasm and rudeness before they could push her away. But somehow Lottie and Katie and the rest of them had gotten through to her, and now Trish’s fierceness was going in a different direction.

“I know, I know. I have to tell her, but not now. Not like this.”

“We, my brother, you are in a pickle because of your pickle.”

“Jesus, Trish.” I threw a pencil at her and she ducked. “You don’t have to be in this with me.”

“Yeah, I do. You’re all I’ve got.” She said it casually, but we both knew it was true. We’d clung to each other since we were very young. We’d been through a lot, and that bonds two people, even more so when they’re blood.

“Lucky me,” I said, throwing an empty soda can at her.

“Screw you.”

My phone buzzed. A message from Katie.

Want to come hang out, friend? My place?

The tiniest part of me wanted to say that I was busy. That I couldn’t. It had been hard enough being around her this afternoon, and that was only for a few minutes. Being in her cramped dorm room, surrounded by her? Astronomically more difficult.

But it was only a tiny part.

When?

***

She was wearing an old frumpy t-shirt and shorts when I opened the door, and she wasn’t wearing her contacts again. Of course. The universe was setting me up for pure torture.

She looked like the girl who had wrapped her legs around me and kissed me and then f**ked me. Only the difference was that this time, I didn’t want to f**k her. I wanted to kiss her and touch her stomach and her fingertips and the backs of her knees and everywhere in between. I wanted to memorize every inch of her, every freckle. I wanted to know the map of her body, what made her sigh in pleasure, what she liked, what made her beg for more. I wanted taste her.

With all that running through my mind, I didn’t notice that her wall was covered in white sheets of paper. Extra large sheets, like teachers used to draw gigantic letters on for kids to teach them how to read.

“What happened to the pictures?” I assumed they’d met their demise like the others from her room. She’d already gotten rid of a lot of them after Zack had attacked her, but this time she’d cleared them all.

She pointed to the trash can and then held something out to me. A marker.

“I think my wall needs a little decorating, don’t you? It’s all yours.” She flopped onto her bed as if she were waiting for me to get to work.

“You aren’t going to help?”

“I’d rather watch you. Did you know that you do this thing with your mouth when you draw?” She demonstrated by biting the side of her bottom lip. It probably wasn’t nearly as sexy when I did it.

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

Fuck, I wanted to kiss her so bad.

“So you thought you could play the friend card and I’d just come and decorate your wall for you without getting anything in return? You drive a hard bargain, sweetheart.”

“Do you want another turkey dinner?”

“God, I’m still dealing with the leftovers from the last one.”

“Yeah, I think you should probably throw those out.”

“Some of it did grow legs and start forming an army to plot my death, so you’re probably right.” She even made talking about leftovers into something sexy. Or maybe that was just me.

She laughed and there was a beat of silence that stretched longer and longer. I finally took my eyes off her and put them on the blank wall.

“Get to work, Picasso,” she said, kicking her leg out and hitting me in the stomach.

“Hey, no violence. I can’t work in these conditions.” I grabbed her foot when she lashed out again. I held on as she struggled. Fuck the blank wall.

“Let me go,” she squealed as I grabbed her other ankle and yanked her toward me.

“I think I’d rather have another canvas,” I said, pulling her closer. Her eyes were wide with shock and surprise. “You.”

“Stryker,” she said, but it was more of a whisper. “We’re friends.”

“Friends can’t wrestle each other?” I knew I was pushing it, but I was having a hard time stopping.

It wasn’t until I was nearly on top of her that I realized what I’d done.

“Oh, shit. I am so sorry.” I backed away. “I shouldn’t have done that, Katie.”

She pushed herself up on her elbows, her cheeks a little red.

“No, it’s my fault. I was teasing you.” She got off the bed and went to turn on some music. “I was flirting with you. I’m sorry.”

“Is that what that was?”

“Oh, Jesus. I should not be flirting with you.” She put her face in her hands as “Never Let Me Go”, by Florence and The Machine came through her iPod speakers. “I should be dealing with the fact that my dad is dead. I shouldn’t be thinking about you. Like that.”

“Hey, hey.” I put my hands on her shoulders. She turned and I wrapped her in a hug again. Effortless. As easy as breathing.

“I’m a horrible, terrible person,” she said.

“You know, most of the horrible, terrible people in the world don’t believe they’re horrible and terrible. You think Hitler looked in the mirror and told himself that? I don’t think so.”

“What does Hitler have to do with it?”

“Nothing, I was just trying to make a point and screwed it up.”

She pulled back and looked up at me. The brown eyes behind those glasses would be my undoing.

“I don’t know how to do this anymore,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Be.”

“Be what?”

“Just…human, I guess. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to do everything. Talking and eating and even breathing. None of it is easy anymore.”

“I think that’s normal.”

“How would you know?”

“I just do.”

I smoothed her hair back from her face with both hands and put a kiss on her forehead. It was a friend thing to do.

She held onto my forearms locking me in place.

“Fuck me. Please.”

Katie

I didn’t know what made me say it. I just knew that I wanted to forget for a little while, like we had before. Those times with him, when we’d been nak*d and sweating and together, I hadn’t been thinking about anything. I wanted that again.

He was shocked for only half a second and then I watched his face, waiting for his response. I held him there and begged him with my eyes and my mind and everything else.

Just f**k me.

He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to mine and then yanked his arms out of my grasp.

“No.” Stepping away from me, he shook his head, swiping his hand through his hair. “Jesus, Katie. Why do you do this to me?”

“Do what?”

“You just…You say you want to be friends and then you ask me to f**k you and it’s back and forth. I never know where I stand and it makes me so f**king crazy I can’t even think about anything else.” He started pacing the room. “You drive me insane because you never know what you want and you expect me to just accommodate you. And I do it. Every time. You say jump and I get out a goddamn trampoline. When I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about you and wanting you. I want to walk across this room and do what you want, but I can’t. I can’t f**k you anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t just f**k you because I love you!”

I loved going on roller coasters. The moment I lived for was when the car slowly clicked its way up to the very top of the highest point, and then there were those breathless moments when it raced to the bottom and your stomach dropped into your feet and you couldn’t catch your breath.

This was just like that, only worse.

“I love you, Katie.”

Katie

I’d forgotten how to speak. How to take words and put them together in my mind in an order that would make sense and convey what I was feeling. Maybe because I didn’t know what I was feeling.

“I know this is the wrong thing to say, at the wrong time. It’s all wrong.”

Something Lottie said came back to me. Something about how maybe Stryker and I were so wrong for each other that it was right.

“I just…I had to tell you. I had to say it out loud.”

Words, words would be good right about now. Some words. Any words.

“Are you f**king serious?” Not the best choice of words, but it was a start.

“Yeah. I know, I know. It’s…crazy.” He started pacing again, as if he had to keep moving. “You know what’s even crazier? I knew that first time I saw you. In that pink dress. I just…I knew. I was watching you during the entire party. You didn’t see me, but I was. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I kept trying to find your flaws, to convince myself you weren’t attractive, which backfired because I only wanted you more.”

“My flaws?”

“I told myself that your eyes were too big, and you were too short, and…well, that was as far as I got.”

“Oh.”

My stomach still felt like it was going to fall out my body, through the floor and into the room below us.

“But, Katie, there’s something you should know.” Other than the fact that he loves me? What more could there be?

“I haven’t said it back,” I said, interrupting whatever thing he’d been about to tell me.