Page 40 of The Beautiful Collision
Before I can process that, she gives me another of those little smiles, then spins out of my arms, leaving me standing there like an asshole with a visible hard-on and my head spinning faster than the disco ball someone inexplicably set up in my living room.
I watch her disappear into the crowd, probably off to orchestrate another social miracle or destroy another man’s sanity. My body is screaming at me to follow her, to finish what we started, but my brain—what’s left of it—knows better.
She set a trap, and I walked right into it.
Mike appears at my side, his expression somewhere between amused and impressed. “So,” he says. “That looked cozy.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying, for someone who’s supposed to be seducing her, you look like you’ve got the world’s worst case of blue balls.”
He’s not wrong.
“The guys are updating the odds,” he continues. “After that display, Rook thinks you’ve got it in the bag. But Schmidt thinks Maya is going to eat you alive, take everything you’ve got to give, and then bail before you blink, let alone get her to say she loves you.”
I watch her across the room, laughing at something Sophie’s saying, looking like she didn’t just spend three minutes grinding against me like the world was ending. Hell, worse than that, she looks completely unaffected by what just happened between us, while here I am looking flushed and still rock hard.
“Yeah,” I mutter, adjusting myself discreetly. “Schmidt might have a point.”
thirteen
MAYA
The clickof the apartment door sounds like a gunshot in the sudden silence.
One second the place was chaos—music pounding, bodies pressed together, the air thick with promise and possibility. Now it’s just me and Maine, standing in the wreckage of disposable cups and the lingering smell of spilled beer and bad decisions.
Except tonight’s decisions weren’t bad.
They were fuckingelectric.
My skin still burns where he touched me on the dance floor. I can feel the ghost of his erection pressed against my ass. The party clearly worked to lift his spirits, but it worked for me as well. For a few glorious hours, I wasn’t the girl whose family wants her to disappear, lonely and sad.
I was the conductor, the queen, the one who made the magic happen.
But now the magic’s over, and that hollow ache is creeping back in. The one that started when I saw him with his sister earlier, so gentle and patient, giving her the kind of unconditional care I’ve never known. The one that deepened when my siblings left my text on read, their silence louder than any rejection.
Thinking of you guys.
That’s all I could manage. A white flag, a tentative reach across the chasm. And they couldn’t even be bothered to respond. Not a thumbs-up, not a ‘miss you too,’ not even a rejection. Just those cruel blue checkmarks telling me they saw it and chose to ignore me.
I turn to face Maine, feeling something raw and desperate in my chest. He’s looking at me like I’m water in the desert, like I’m salvation after the hell his day has been. Whereas I see him as rebellion incarnate, the match I need to burn down everything my family thinks I should be.
Fuck being ignored. Fuck being discarded. Fuck playing by their rules.
I cross the space between us in three steps, my heels clicking against the floor with the finality of a decision made. He doesn’t move, just watches me approach with those impossibly blue eyes that have been driving me insane for weeks. When I reach him, I don’t hesitate. I shove him back against the wall.
“Maya—“
I silence him with my mouth.
This isn’t soft. This isn’t sweet. This is me taking back every ounce of power my family tried to steal with their silence. But it’s more than that. It’s me giving something to someone who always gives to others—care to his sister, support to his parents, laughter to his friends—and never gets taken care of himself.
I don’t want the performer. I want the raw, unfiltered Maine I glimpsed earlier.
My teeth catch his bottom lip, not quite gentle, and the groan that rumbles through his chest vibrates against my palms. His hands come up to my waist, but I’m already in control, pressing my entire body against his, feeling every muscle through our clothes. And, when I pull back, we’re both breathing hard.
“Do you want this?” The words come out rougher than intended, but I need to hear him say it. Not because I doubt the evidence pressed against my stomach, but because I need this to be his choice too. I’m reclaiming my power, not stealing his. I want to look after him, but he needs to want me to.
