Shatter (True Believers #4)(54)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Guess what today is?” I asked her.

“Sunday?”

“It’s Valentine’s Day.” A holiday I frankly despised, given that it had morphed into a commercial marketing ploy to sell flowers and chocolates under the pressure of being a romantic failure if you didn’t comply. Yet no one seemed to discuss the fact that St. Valentine had been beheaded, hardly a well from which romance should spring. But it was fascinating to note that now that I was head over ass for Kylie, I was perfectly willing to believe the bullshit surrounding February fourteenth.

“Really? Aw.” She strained to give me a kiss. “That’s perfect.”

It was. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” But now that I was fully awake and she was moving around, I was starting to get hard, which made me nervous. I held her around the waist, but I rolled to the side to snag my underwear off the floor. When I started to stick my feet through them, she blinked at me.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting my underwear on. It makes me nervous when we’re naked and parts are touching without protection.”

She looked annoyed, but she had to know it only made sense. She didn’t say anything, though.

“Can you maybe go on the pill?” I asked her. “I know you had reasons you didn’t want to, but I think it would alleviate a lot of stress for both of us if you did.”

“Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“We have to talk about it sometime.” Yesterday wouldn’t be too soon for me. I wasn’t going to be able to be stress-free until she was on some serious hard-core birth control. “If you don’t want to take hormones, you can get an IUD. That’s hormone-free.”

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll go to the doctor and talk to her.”

Why was she making me feel like a dick? It wasn’t something we could ignore. A little voice in the back of my head reminded me that she was barely twenty-one, and that a five-year age gap may not seem like much, but maybe it was when it came to certain things. Then I felt like a dick for real for thinking that.

“Did you have any plans for today?”

“Nope. Just a shit ton of studying. I’m doing awful in all my classes. Better than last month, but it’s hard to catch back up.”

“Is there anything I can help you with?”

“You can give me a portion of your brain.”

“That might be counterproductive given that once it leaves my body all parts of my brain will be non-functioning. But I can take you to the library or the coffee shop and pump you full of caffeine. I can also answer any chem questions you might have.”

“Okay.” She yawned. “Can we go out for breakfast?”

“Of course. Where do you want to go?”

“Somewhere that has pancakes. I heart pancakes.” She made a little heart with her fingers.

“Done.” I felt guilty for starting the day off with the touchy birth control topic. Then was annoyed with myself for feeling guilty. “I’m surprised I don’t have a hangover today. I drank way too much rum last night before you showed up.”

“I have a slight headache, I’m not going to lie.” She sat up and rolled her neck. “But I think coffee will fix it.”

I watched Kylie as she climbed over me and walked across the room in nothing but the shirt she had never bothered to take off. It was unbuttoned and flapped open as she went into the bathroom. She didn’t close the door, just sat down on the toilet right in my line of view. I’d never had a girlfriend who was so comfortable with her body and it was actually pretty awesome. Granted, I didn’t need or particularly want to see Kylie peeing, but I didn’t object to it, and the plus side of that liberated attitude was I got to see her strolling around naked.

Like when she flushed then stood up and stretched, her arms going over her head. “Should I take a shower?”

The questions she asked sometimes. They defied logic. But it was part of her charm. “Do you feel dirty?”

She grinned. “I always feel dirty when I’m with you.”

“I completely understand.” My hands were behind my head and I had put my glasses on so I could fully appreciate the view of her in that doorway. “Take a two-minute shower. No hair washing. That will keep us from breakfast for an hour.”

“Okay.” She yawned again and dropped her shirt.

Turning back to the bathroom, she leaned into the shower and turned on the water, giving me a shot that I would have loved to capture on film, except that I know full well no electronic source is ever fully secure and nothing is ever truly deleted. So I would just have to commit her image to memory, remember this day, this moment.

And there she was out of the shower just a couple of minutes later, toweling herself off. My God. I needed to remind myself a hundred times a day I was a lucky bastard.

While she got dressed I took a quick shower myself, then, holding hands and still groggy, we trudged off to the pancake house, where I saw a whole new side of Kylie. I’d never seen her eat much of anything, and watching her tear up breakfast was a different perspective. I liked how she smiled the whole time as we talked and laughed and ate, how she closed her eyes when she took particularly delightful bites, and how she bounced in her seat a little with excitement when they brought her extra whipped butter. There must be something completely freeing about being comfortable expressing your genuine emotions all the time. I would feel ridiculous showing that kind of enthusiasm.

Maybe that was why we were drawn to each other.

“You’re so good for me,” I told her. “You complement me.”

She made a face. “Well, everyone likes to be complimented. Didn’t your other girlfriends tell you were hot? Or that you have a fab penis?”

I choked on my coffee. “No, not that compliment. Complement, as in a our personalities together create a perfect balance.”

She started laughing. “Oh. Well, they sound exactly the same spoken.”

“Very true, they do.” And I appreciated that she could laugh at the mistake, one anyone could have made in that context. “But now that you mention it, no, no one has ever told me I have a fab penis.”

“Bitches,” she teased.

“Seriously. What’s a guy have to do to get a compliment around here?”

“A guy just needs me.” She gave me a sunny smile behind her coffee mug. “Your penis is glorious.”

“Yeah.” My laughter died out. “He does need you.”