He abruptly moves his mouth away from mine and starts trailing kisses down my jawline, my throat, while pressing his body up against me. I moan at the feel of him and at the adrenaline pulsating through me. Oh God, I can’t believe I’m groaning. I never groan.

“I’ve wanted to do this since we first met,” he breathes against the bottom of my neck and my eyelids flutter shut as I float from reality. I wish I could drift farther. Forget everything. I’m getting close.

“Luke, we gotta go!” a male voice shouts and just like that the moment shatters.

I slam back to the real world, the safe feeling evaporating from my body. But Luke seems to sink farther into our little fantasy, his grip on my neck constricting as his mouth travels toward my breasts.

“Luke,” I pant, glancing around. “I think someone just yelled for you.”

“Just a second.” He breathes heavily against the top of my chest, his head tipped down, his fingertips delving into my waist, his hands trembling. I’m not sure what’s going on but I sense something’s off, like he’s struggling to let me go.

Seth appears across the lawn, heading around the trees toward us, smoking a cigarette. His honey-brown eyes are full of irritation and his highlighted blond hair is sticking up. “Luke,” he calls out. “We gotta go if we’re going to get all your shit out of the dorm today.”

Luke is still breathing against my neck, his fingers pressing deeper into my skin. I begin to wonder if I’m going to have to pry him off—and if I can—but then he releases me and pushes away. There’s a glazed look in his eyes and the cut on his lip looks like it’s about to split open again.

“What?” He blinks and then skims the trees, grass, and dorm building like he’s forgotten where we are.

“What are you doing?” Seth asks as he arrives in front of the tree we’re standing under. “We got to go. Greyson told Douglas we’d be down there in an hour to sign the lease.”

Luke rubs his hand down his face, staring at me for a moment, and then composes himself enough to turn around. “I’m coming, so freaking relax,” he says, sounding annoyed.

Seth rolls his eyes at him and then slants them to the side to look at me. “Are you coming, too?”

I open my mouth to say that I’m not, because it’s obvious he doesn’t want me to come along, but Luke turns and laces our fingers together and the rush of safeness causes my knees to buckle.

I grip his shoulders, hoping he can’t notice how bad I’m trembling.

“Yeah, she’s coming,” he speaks for me, tracing his finger along the inside of my wrist.

Before I can react or protest, he hauls me across the yard with him. Side by side. Together. And it leaves me feeling lost because I don’t feel so alone. For the first time in forever, I’m content right where I am.

Chapter 11

Luke


We spend the entire Sunday moving everyone’s stuff into the apartment and then unpacking the boxes. It’s a decent place, with tan carpet and walls, a small kitchen attached to an even smaller dining room and living room. There’s two small bedrooms, one very small bath, but it’s affordable. No one has any plates or anything and even though the place is furnished, we still need a lot of stuff. I’m getting a little nervous about the fact that I only have a little less than two hundred bucks in my wallet and make a vow to get out and start trying to win some money.

Violet and I barely speak the entire time we unpack boxes, rearrange the furniture, and hook up the television. Not just because we’re too busy to talk, but because I can’t think of anything to say and she seems to be drifting down that path, too. The room fills with awkward silence and it makes me question if this living together thing is going to work.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but things just got extremely complicated with that kiss and I don’t handle complicated well. It makes life hard to live and I’ve always tries to avoid making things complicated. But now I want to let a very complex and complicated girl into my life, a girl who has a hold over me. I mean, I actually kissed her. And not because I needed to gain control for a moment, but because she looked upset and I wanted to comfort her and that was the first way I could think of. I kissed her in a way I’ve never kissed anyone. I kissed her with desire. It’s scaring the shit out of me, especially because she seems to need me as much as I want her. All I want to do right now is go looking for a fight or find a girl to fuck and bail out on, since Violet obviously can’t be that girl for me. I want to drown in alcohol. Run away. But somehow I end up hanging around the apartment all day. I fell asleep on the couch, even though I said we could share a room, telling Violet I just wanted to chill and watch television for the night. She didn’t seem that unhappy about it. In fact, she seemed a little relieved.

I toss and turn all night on the leather couch, eventually falling off into a nice peaceful dream about Violet. She lies wide-eyed beneath me, her arms pinned down as I slip inside her over and over again. There’s no nightmares of sticking needles in my mother’s arm or seeing her come home with blood all over her hands and clothes, knowing she probably did something terrible. There’s no being forced to listen to her maddening songs or her telling me how much she needs me. No cops banging on the door. No listening to her cry out in the night. There’s just me… and Violet… her big green eyes filled with excitement as I kiss her, touch her, pull at her hair…

I wake up to someone tapping my shoulder. At first I think it’s Seth because it seems like something he would do, but then I feel the soft touch of hair tickling my cheek.

“Luke, wake up,” Violet whispers, her breath hot against my cheek.

I roll my eyes open to her hovering over me, her wavy hair hanging over her shoulders and down into my face. Her eyes are lined with black, her lips glossy, and she has a necklace on. She smells incredible, too, like soap and something fruity I’d seriously like to eat right now.

“I need a ride,” she says, leaning back a little and sitting down on the edge of the sofa. There’s this look in her eyes, like she’s hating to ask me for help.

I gradually sit up, the blanket slipping off, but I quickly pull it back up around my waist. I sleep in my boxers and my cock is hard from the dream I was having about her. “Where?”

She bites her lip, her face twisting with animosity. “To the police station downtown.”

I rub the tiredness from my eyes. “Why?”

“Because.”

“Are we really going to go back to the one-word responses?”

She works not to smile, smashing her lips tightly together. “What? You think just because you kissed me that I’ll be more responsive to your questions?”

“You seemed pretty responsive yesterday,” I say, mentally cursing myself for starting it up again so quickly.

She fidgets with a leather watch on her wrist, but her eyes light up. “Well, maybe I’m feeling a little differently today.”

“Are you?”

“Maybe.”

God damn it, I need her to tell me more, but I can’t just ask her. That would be giving her way too much control over me. “You’re not going to even give me a little bit of a hint?”

“No.”

I let out a breath, shaking my head. “All right, I can give you a ride to the police station just as long as you promise to eventually tell me why you have to go down there.”

She nods once and then gets to her feet. She has a pair of black shorts on that cup her fucking firm ass and a black-and-white tube top that hugs her lean body and pushes up her cleavage. “Eventually,” she says.

Damn her and her one-word sentences. It’s frustrating beyond comprehension. I toss the blanket aside and get off the couch, my cock still a little hard, but I decide oh well. Her eyes drift down to my cock, then to my chest as I head to the bathroom to get dressed, feeling pretty good about myself at the moment, like I might have gotten the upper hand again.

“Give me like ten and I’ll be out,” I say and shut the bathroom door. I brush my teeth, tug on a black shirt and a pair of jeans, then douse myself in cologne. It’s the first morning in a long time where I haven’t run straight to a series of shots of Jack Daniel’s, but the fact that I have to drive her somewhere makes me not want to go there just yet. I’ll wait until I get home and then let myself sink into the blissful contentment of alcohol and hopefully it’ll clear Violet out of my head for a while.

I run a hand through my hair then go out to the living room where she’s waiting for me on the sofa, staring down at her boots. She looks exhausted and tense and it makes me want to kiss her again and try to take away whatever is making her look that way. Yes, I definitely need shots and a fucking blowjob or something.

I scoop up my keys and wallet from the kitchen counter and wind a path through the remaining unpacked boxes around the room. “Ready?”

She glances up at me, startled, but quickly gathers herself and gets to her feet. “Yeah.” She trudges for the door without looking over her shoulder, her head tipped down, looking like someone just killed her dog.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I follow her out the front door and into the sunlight, resisting the overwhelming urge to put my hand up to the small of her back and guide her down to my car.

“Yep, I’m perfect,” she says, waving me off, then she trots down the stairs to the carport, keeping distance between us like she knows what I’m considering doing with my hands.

She barely speaks to me the entire drive and I hate how we’ve gone back to the place we pretty much started at. I ask her a few questions, push for a conversation, but she continues to give me her one-word responses. So I give up and ten minutes later we’re pulling up to the police station, an older brick building located in the heart of the town between stoplights, parking lots, and shops. I wait a moment, deciding what I’m supposed to do. Say, see you later. Tell her I’ll pick her up. Kiss her good-bye.