Page 112 of Never Kiss and Tell

“I don’t pity you.”Iadmire you. “What happened in the past doesn’t change right now.”I’m completely obsessed with you and some dickhead pervert isn’t going to change that.

“What do you want from me, Charlie?”

Everything.

“Remember when you asked about my mom?”

She nods silently.

“She had cancer in the brain. I was taking care of her for twoyears. I lived with her. When I wasn’t working for Dad, I was with Mom, feeding her, taking her to doctor appointments. The night she died, I was at a party, fucking some girl I didn’t even know.”

A quiet tear slips down her cheek. I look away.

“She’d called me. I didn’t answer. Dad was away. Andi was away. I just kept thinking that I needed to let go for a while . . .” I take a deep breath. “She died because I wasn’t there. I should have been there.”

The guilt I used to be able to wash down with whiskey consumes me and it’s all I can do not to scream. Why had I been so fucking selfish?

“Hey,” Bailey says, sliding above me to straddle my hips. She leans down, placing her hands on either side of my head. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

I shake my head, running a hand over my face. “I did know. That’s the problem.”

Bailey shakes her head, her golden hair falling around me in waves. “Everyone deserves a break.” She places a soft kiss to my forehead. “Your mom was sick. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. She was a wonderful woman. But no amount of you caring for her could have stopped what was happening.”

“Dad still thinks it’s my fault.”

She shakes her head aggressively. “No, he doesn’t. Your mom had a cancer that is almost impossible to beat. Your dad doesn’t blame you. No one does.”

I blame me.

Her hands smooth up my arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

“One day you’ll stop being so hard on yourself and realize you don’t deserve half the stuff you put yourself through.”

Bailey still thinks I’m the good guy, despite everything I’ve told her. She’s wrong and she’ll soon come to realize I’m not capable of holding on to something. I don’t know what it is. Maybe my brain’s fucked up after losing Mom. I only hope I can hold it together when she realizes how big of a mistake it was, giving me her trust and forgiveness.

“Will you kiss me?” she asks, her voice small. A shiver runs through her, her nipples hard from the cold of the air conditioner. I pull the comforter up, wrapping it around her shoulders and then pulling her down to me.

When she kisses me, I realize I may have made a miscalculation.

Fucking Bailey won’t get her out of my head any more than sending her back to California will. I’ve memorized every inch of her body, every hair on her head and yet, like a starved animal, I want more. I want to pick apart her brain and learn every nuance I can. I want to go to the dark corners of her mind and find the thoughts that she’s too afraid to tell anyone else.

“One day you’re going to hate me, sweetheart,” I whisper against her lips.

Her hand comes up, cupping my cheek. “I could never hate you. I think that’s the problem.” She kisses me again. “I don’t want to think about that right now.”

She’s asking me to be right here, in the moment with her. Make us both forget our scars and just enjoy each other.

I can do that.

In fact, I did it until the sun rose and birds were chirping outside the window.

Bailey

In the week that follows my heart-to-heart with Charlie, I begin to notice a peculiar sensation. Something akin to walking on clouds. Never in a million years did I think the deal between Charlie and I would turn into something neither of us could control, but here we are.

While there’s no title, no public knowledge, nothing to let anyone know that we’ve been secretly sleeping in each other’s beds every night, there’s a connection between the two of us when we’re in a room together. It feels like I’m being pulled to him by some kind of invisible rope.

We spend the next week getting to know each other in a long, drawn-out form of twenty questions. I learned that his favorite color is blue and the way he said it while brushing my hair out of my eyes made my stomach do a somersault. I also learned that he loves dogs, and he’d had one until a couple years ago when it passed. The thought made me sad. Losing a familymember is shitty. Losing a parent is devastating; but losing a pet, something that loves you unconditionally, is the closest thing to death that I’ve ever experienced.

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