Page 65 of Duke's Daring Bookworm
Lily took her drink and wrinkled her nose at the smell of it. She didn’t drink it and simply held it delicately, like it would bite her. I took a long swig of mine and inwardly cringed at the taste. They say it’s acquired, and I hoped to get used to it soon enough.
We wandered through the party and when I finished my drink, I took Lily’s and finished hers. She had been quiet and clung to me tightly. I enjoyed talking to her. She always had something unexpected to say. I shook off my discomfort at her silence. We were here to party.
Lily practically melted into my side when we stopped to talk to some guys from school. I smiled and wrapped my arms around her to pull her close.
I took a few swigs from the maroon and silver flask someone passed around, and my body felt all boneless as the world spun.
“Come dance with me,” I shouted at Lily, the music too loud for anything else. She shook her head and said something I couldn’t quite understand. She pulled me toward the house and my heart leaped at what I had planned. Yes, now was the perfect time for a kiss. She looked relieved when I nodded, and we wove our way through the crowd to the house.
“This way. I know a place that’s quiet and private where we can take a break.” I led us through the house to a small sitting room no one used just off a back hall. This place had twists and turns to rival any maze, but I used that to our advantage tonight. No one could disturb us if they couldn’t find us.
“Thank you,” she said when we were away from the noise. Her words were soft and worn down, like the effort of existing at the party exhausted her, but that couldn’t be right. He’d only been talking to my friends.
I stumbled a bit, but righted myself on the wall so I could push through the door to the right into a small, red room. A faint sheen of dust covered the lavish decor. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the residents had all but forgotten it. A stuffed porcupine sat on the side table next to a small loveseat.
Perfect.
The loveseat, not the porcupine.
Lily let go of my hand and walked over to a wall covered in books. They were old and bound in real leather. The smell permeated the room. I wrinkled my nose, but Lily picked one up and took a long sniff from its pages. Her shoulders slumped, like the smell itself could relax her.
“I love the smell of books,” she said as she thumbed through it before carefully replacing it exactly where it had been before.
“I love the smell of you.”
Shit.
I sounded dopey.
Wait, no, I wasn’t supposed to say that at all.
Lily just looked at me like I’d grown a second head before going to the couch by the porcupine and sitting down.
I followed her over and sat as close to her as I could. This was it. This was when I should kiss her. She looked at me with a slightly confused and entirely adorable expression. I couldn’t stop what was coming, and more to the point, I didn’t want to stop it.
I leaned into her and closed my eyes, anticipation whirling in my belly. My palms were sweaty again, and I avoided touching her so she wouldn’t realize how nervous she made me. The alcohol took the edge off, but this was still Lily, and I was still about to kiss her.
Because I closed my eyes, I didn’t see it coming. The blow landed square on the left side of my jaw and held enough force to push my head back. The combined force of the hit and my drunken state sent me off balance, despite my seated position, and I fell back into the porcupine on the side table.
“Oh, my god! Sam!” I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet when I felt Lily’s hands on me, helping me sit up. When I finally opened them, the room spun, and Lily had tears running down her face. I still didn’t fully understand what happened. Weren’t we supposed to be kissing?
“I—” I couldn’t find the words to finish my sentence, as bile rose in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down. The last thing I needed was to further humiliate myself by vomiting on her. “Ouch.”
“I’m so sorry. It’s just—you were so close and were you going to kiss me? No, that’s insane. Maybe you just drank too much. Either way, I was overwhelmed, and I panicked.” She backed away from me once she saw I wasn’t bleeding anywhere. “I’m sorry. I have to… I have to go.”
Lily ran from the room, leaving me to pull quills from my shirt and wonder where the hell everything went so wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Five
2012
Lily ran away from me. I stood staring at the door for too long before I came to my senses enough to run after her. We were at an unfamiliar house crowded, and she didn’t drive.
Shit.
I fucked up. I had to make this right.
I opened the door and looked both ways down the hall. Where the fuck did she go? Soft, feminine voices came from around the corner to my right, one of them as familiar to me as my own.
