definitely beautiful and provocative. Sometimes it was hard to live with her never-ending perfection, but she was family, and she’d swooped into my life when I’d needed her the most. She’d helped me get back on my feet when both men in my life had dumped me. She’d helped me find a place to live when I’d had nowhere to go. She’d helped me heal my shattered heart when I was sure I couldn’t. She’d even helped Kellan and I get back together. No, whatever her eccentricities, I loved her.
I was smiling and shaking my head at her when she tossed back, “I’ll be out like a light if you guys want to go at it again?” I sighed as Kellan laughed. Pulling back to look at him, I smacked his chest again. “Would you stop encouraging her?” He smiled, still chuckling and I sighed again. “I wish the two of you had a better hobby than trying to embarrass me.”
Twisting me around to face him, he placed a tender kiss on my forehead. “Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about it at my place.” Rocking my hips back and forth, our bodies touching and retreating enticingly, he added, “Maybe I’ll just embarrass you back to my home?” Raising an eyebrow, he grinned crookedly at me. I wanted to smack him again, but that look was too damn sexy. I ended up kissing him instead, which, of course, made him chuckle.
Kellan stayed with me all afternoon, helping me go over everything and anything that had to do with school. I was starting my last year soon. I had everything ready to go, all my classes lined up, all my books purchased, but going over my plan helped me to not feel so nervous about it.
I don’t know why I was still nervous about the first day of school. You would think that after sixteen grades, I’d be used to it by now, but I wasn’t. That first day of school phobia had even made me delay starting college after high school.
My mom and dad had been furious about that, but I’d just been too nervous to do it. My mom had been going through a small cancer scare at the time, a small lump found that she’d had to have removed. Even though they’d protested, I’d taken the opportunity to stay home with her 35
while she went through treatments. She hated me missing school, but it worked out for me. I got to take care of her and delay doing something that terrified my eighteen-year-old self.
She was one hundred percent better long before the school year was up, and begged me to quit wasting my time with her and enter late. I’d already deferred for a year, though, so I took all the time I could.
I may have delayed for another year, but eventually Anna had had enough and had marched me down to the office after my year hiatus and forced me to get registered at the school I’d already been accepted to—Ohio University. And of course, once I was there I was fine. It was getting through the door that was the hard part for me. I was working on that too.
But I suppose my delay had ended up being a good thing. I probably wouldn’t have met Denny if I hadn’t taken that year to lounge around my parents’ place. And then, if I’d never met Denny, I definitely wouldn’t have ever met Kellan. Even though I hated how we started, how much we’d hurt Denny, who was an incredibly good guy who really didn’t deserve everything we’d put him through, I was still grateful that fate had led me to Seattle, to Kellan.
Kellan thought my nerves were cute. He didn’t seem to get nervous about much of anything. He could probably walk into the first day of school, thirty minutes late, completely naked, and be absolutely fine. I smiled to myself as I reconsidered. No, people and places may not affect him, but feelings did. Telling me that he loved me for the first time had sure scared him, probably worse than all of my first day jitters combined.
Well, it was nice to know that he wasn’t impervious to nerves.
I was majoring in English this year, a fact that Kellan teased me about.
He seemed to think I’d be better suited for Psychology. Personally, I think that was because he wanted me to take another class like my Human Sexuality course last year. He was sort of incorrigible when it came to the baser instincts. Not that I had much room to talk, at least, not when it came to him. I just couldn’t stop myself from wanting to be all over him whenever he was near.
36
After a full day of helping me map out everything, right down to which path I needed to walk through in the quad, it was finally time for me to go to work.
Smiling as we walked through the apartment’s parking lot, I started to grab the keys from his hand. “Can I drive?” I asked playfully, walking backwards in front of him as I tried to jiggle the keys out of the death-grip he had around them.
Scowling wonderfully, he shook his head and jerked his hand away.
“No, you cannot.”
Stopping and putting my hands on my hips as he walked past me, I stuck my lip out. “Why not?”
He took two steps and then stopped and walked back to me. His mouth was instantly sucking on my pouting lip. I was instantly no longer pouting. Against my skin, he murmured, “Because…that is my baby, and I don’t share her.” He growled that to me and my breath quickened.
“I thought I was your baby,” I managed to squeak out.
Smiling, he grabbed my hips and pulled me into his. “You are.” His lips returned to mine, his kiss deep, territorial almost. When I felt that familiar fire starting to ignite, when I was ready to yank off that bothersome t-shirt and glorify his body with my tongue, he broke apart from me and breathed, “And I don’t share you either.” As my body was a delightful, gooey warmth of sensuality, I could have melted right there into the sidewalk. He laughed and finished pulling me to the car. I—quite happily—scooted into the passenger’s side.
Still smiling over his declaration of possession, it wasn’t too much later that we arrived at my second home here in Seattle. Well, third truly. Kellan’s place will always feel like home to me. Even with all of the bad memories that lingered there.
37
Parking in the stall that his Chevelle frequented so often that it was unofficially known as “Kellan’s Spot,” he shut off his mechanical baby. If only he could turn me off so easily. I still felt a little worked up. Not the best way to start my shift, and that was probably the real reason why Kellan had done it. He may call me a tease, but that boy enjoyed making me squirm.
I stepped out of his car right as he walked around to open my door.
He frowned that I hadn’t waited, then he held his hand out for me. I took it, like I always did, and we walked hand-in-hand to the large, rectangu-lar building where Kellan found peace.
While Pete’s was comforting and familiar to me, it was sort of solace for Kellan. He came here to play, to get away, to socialize, to, at one time, pick up girls, and I think to shut off his mind for a while. I’d disrupted that peace for him when I was working here while we’d been suffering through figuring out our relationship, but the serenity was back now and the lazy smile that curled around his lips as we stepped through the door clearly showed that.
Holding one set of the double doors open for me, he gallantly led me in, kissing my hand as it extended away from him. He generally did something physical when we walked through the door. Sometimes it was a peck on the cheek, sometimes his hand snuck around my waist, but there was always something. Some sort of announcement to the room— I was his.
He’d wanted that when our relationship was secret, and now that it wasn’t, he let everybody know it. Including the sulking bartender who was watching us.
Rita had been here since Kellan first arrived, when he’d come back from L.A. She’d had her sights set on him immediately and, husband-be-damned, sometime in the past few years, she’d successfully had him. It made me a little nauseous. She was at least twice his age, over-tanned leathery skin, over-bleached blonde hair, and a sense of fashion that left nothing to the imagination. I’d never asked Kellan about their hookup.
Honestly, I didn’t want to know…ever.