Page 6 of Lose Me In The Shadows

His heart did this nervous flip thing it had never done before. Swallowing, Luke walked over to the car and tapped on the window.

Kara hesitated for a moment, before rolling the window down. Her curly hair was a wild mess, face pale. Immediately, his anger and disappointment blew away, leaving only concern behind. She’d obviously was close to panic again. Why?

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was dealing with an emergency but everything is fine now.”

Luke’s bullshit meter went off, but he kept it off his face. He didn’t knowwhyshe was lying to him, and he wanted to know, but he knew girls like her: trouble.

“It’s getting late, if we’re going to hike, we should do it,” he said, uncaring how terse his voice sounded.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Come on.”

They walked in silence, his frustration and Kara’s secrecy a tangible thing between them. By the time they made it to the first cave, he was regretting his decision to go on the date. Usually, when he was this pissed off and horny simultaneously, it was because Conor had been a real asshole about something. But here he was, hovering a few steps behind Kara, the sweet sex-sweat smell she gave off fucking with his dick and his head. He was deeply tempted to grab her, throw her over the boulder ahead of them, and spank her until she cried and confessed the real reason she was so late—before punishment-banging her brains out. The only good part of this fucked up scenario playing out in his head was that all the blood had relocated to his cock, so he felt less guilty about betraying Conor and Micah.

When Kara stopped, Luke barely caught himself from barreling into her. As it was, he brushed up against her back and ass, making it hard to focus when she began to speak.

“If you’re so pissed at me, then why are we even doing this?”

“If you didn’t want to show up, why didn’t you just blow me off?”

She turned to him, her breasts a centimeter from his chest. “I wanted to show up. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Aware he was looming over her, and not caring, he shook his head. “Tell the truth. I deserve that much, at least.”

“I didn’t realize I owed you anything,” she shot back. By now, they were both breathing heavily. The setting sun peeked out from the treetops, casting a serene glow on the budding battle between them. Luke strived to get his temper under check, to understand that this girl—this woman—was a complex tangle of self-respect and insecurity, desire and denial, all coated with a dash of fear. He understood now how Micah and Conor had both been pulled into her undertow. You wanted to hug her tight to your chest and promise her everything would be okay, and you also wanted to lay her out face first over some hard surface and beat her ass until she cried and apologized for putting you through hell. Luke knew this, felt this, and he hadn’t even fucked her yet. How much worse would it get once he got inside her?

Maybeheshould leave. Maybe walking away before he got tangled up in her web was the right idea.

Just as he was about to tell her they were heading back—he wasn’t such an asshole he’d abandon her alone on a hiking trail at dusk—she grabbed his wrist, and a sensation of home andhaving—a feeling Luke had never really experienced, outside of his complicated thing with Conor and Micah—practically shocked him.

The forest was so alive with sound, it was hard to hear her when she whispered, “Okay. I’ll tell you. But…” her eyes were filled with fear. “Ugh, I hate talking about shit like this.”

Luke sighed, self-righteous anger deflating at her confession. He nodded to the boulder, not wanting to have this conversation in the middle of the trail.

He helped her up onto the boulder, trying not to let the feeling of her hips in his hands distract him. He dropped onto the rock next to her.

She fiddled with her shorts as she spoke. “I was going to give you some whole excuse about why I was late. An accident or an emergency call from a family member, I don’t know. The truth is, I sat in the parking lot for half an hour going back and forth over whether I should leave.”

Pain, more of a sting or a burn than a sharp slice, made itself known in Luke’s chest. He felt himself stand, his body in control where his mind wasn’t. He was betraying his best friends for this woman. He didn’t need any of this wishy-washy crap.

Kara placed her fingers on his left wrist. Just a touch, but it was enough to stop him.

He waited, half willing to hear what she was going to say, half dreading it. Because he knew, didn’t he? She didn’t really want to go out with him. She’d had second thoughts, but felt too bad to cancel. Why would she? She’d only fucked Conor and Micah over the past year or so; clearly she had a type, and her type wasn’t Luke James.

So the next words that came out of her mouth surprised him.

“I don’t really like letting people see me vulnerable. It’s happened a few times, I guess during sex,” she laughed bitterly at this, “but rarely just… out in the open like that. The fact that you saw me in the middle of a panic attack, especially over something sostupid, and wanted to go out with me anyway, makes no sense to me. It makes me want to pack up and run, to be honest. I sat in my car with the keys in the ignition and told myself that you must be one of those guys who’s attracted to crazy girls because you have some manic pixie dream girl fixation and that it would never work between us because I am certainly no pixie dream girl. I’m really more of a depressive ogre nightmare bitch.” She gestured at her body, at her generous curves that had made Luke want to swallow his tongue when he’d seen first seen her, and still made his mouth go dry. “Or maybe you’re hoping to come in and be the big man and rescue someone and I’m not someone who needs to be rescued. I’m not. I swear.”

Luke shook his head, trying to listen and not be offended, but how could he not be offended by that shit?

She clearly read the look on his face because she kept talking. “But I wasn’t really worried about that with you, that you were just some pathetic asshole looking for some fictionalized version of a real woman. And that’s even scarier, that you might be for real, and that this isn’t some game to you. I don’t have a good track record with real.”

She put her hand over her chest. “Jesus,” she muttered. “Being open about shit is worse than climbing a wall with a shitty belayer, isn’t it?”

Despite himself, Luke laughed.

“I get it if that’s too messy for you.”

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