Page 23 of Shes my 1 Try

“Hi,” I manage between breaths.

“Hi.” She smiles, the hand under my hoodie moving slowly down to come to a halt on the waistband of my shorts.

“Sorry, I just?—”

“Don’t apologise,” she cuts me off. “It was…perfect.”

“Yeah, you are.” I pull back, winking at her. The soft laugh and the way she plays with her bottom lip, her tongue poking out to capture the remains of our kiss, tasting it, hot as fuck. “You okay?”

“I’m still tingling,” she murmurs, and I spot this twinkle in her eyes. I want to horde it away so no one else will ever see it.

“How about we take this somewhere else, so I can do more than make you tingle?” The twinkle in her eyes becomes a supernova as she sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and my heart does this weird flip-flop thing. While my cock stands to fucking attention.

I take a reluctant step back, her body gravitating toward me, but she stops, her eyes shifting to the envelope on the ground. Stooping to pick it up, she hands it to me. “It could be important.”

Ninety-nine percent of me wants to tear it up. Rip the damn thing to shreds. A look from Wiley stops me and I take it from her, flipping it over. “I’m sorry about Warren. He’s such a dick.”

“Him being your manager isn’t going so well?” she asks, as I slide the envelope open with my thumb, pulling out the thick wad of paper.

“Not for a while now,” I sigh, flicking through the pages. “Fuck!”

“Is everything okay?” Scrunching the papers, I turn away from her. Whatever we are, I don’t want her to see my agro side, not yet anyway. “Asher?”

“NO! Fucking nothing is okay,” I growl, shifting my duffle from across my body to drop it on the ground. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Wiley.”

“Sorry? For what? You haven’t done anything.”

“For this.” I wave the papers in the air, hating myself for not remembering. I’ve been so caught up in this thing between Wiley and me and trying to fit in at a new club that it completely slipped my mind.

Handing her the papers, she waves her hands at me, but I push it forward, insisting. “I want you to read it, Wiley, please.”

Swallowing, she takes them as if they were some deadly snake liable to bite her at any moment and begins to read. The moment it hits her, I know. The slump of her shoulders, and the deep exhale. The little scratch of her eyebrow as she moves onto the next page.

“I wanted today to be perfect,” I admit, regaining the space I created between us. Hoping my confession softens her disappointment.

“It’s not the end of the world,” she answers, though by the look in her eyes, I’d say it’s pretty close to it. “So we’ll have to wait a little longer. Is that so bad?”

“It’s the worst thing in the fucking world,” I howl to the roof, and then cup her face in both hands. “Wiley, I don’t think you understand how much I want you.”

“Trust me, Asher. I understand completely. And yes, I’m disappointed, but it’s not like this,” she waves the papers out to the side, “means we can’t be together, eventually. It just means we’ll have to postpone all the things we wanted to do with each other.”

“God, when you say it like that, it makes me hate it even more.” I funnel my desperation into another kiss, this one deeper and connecting us more than the last, but it’s Wiley who breaks away first this time.

“You better stop now before I tie you up so you can’t go anywhere.”

Placing my hands in front of her, my wrists together, I’m begging her to do just that. “By all means, take me. Tie me up and do all the dirty things this mouth has been promising me.”

Instead, she places the papers in my hands, closing my fingers over them. “I’ll pick you up from the airport when you get back to Australia, I promise. And I will even think of some more dirty things while you’re away.”

“I fucking…” the word love sits on the tip of my tongue, but it’s too soon and instead I opt for something else. “You better.”

“Cross my heart,” she smiles, but it’s tinged with a heaviness neither of us can hide.

“I’ll ring you every day. Twice a day. No. Fucking three times a day.” I plant a kiss on her face after every word, a giggle chasing some of the gloom from what should have been the best time of our lives today.

“I look forward to it. Now go, before you miss your plane.” I walk backwards, not wanting to miss a single moment of being with her, but almost fall on my ass.

“I did that on purpose,” I yell, as she turns and starts walking the other way, blowing me a kiss. Catching it, I plant it on my lips and mutter to myself. “I love you, Wiley Nolan.”

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