Page 19 of Drawn To You

“Do you want a drink?” Joshua asked suddenly. “Because I’m gonna get another drink.” Before I could say anything, Joshua was pulling away and was walking away from me as fast as he could. He found his way into the kitchen and laid his hands on the bottle of rum he’d earlier abandoned. “Don’t you think we’ve both had enough?” I asked, rushing to catch up to him. “No, I don’t think I’ve had nearly enough.” He unscrewed the top of the bottle. “I won’t think I’ve had enough until I’m passed the fuck out.” “What? Why would you do that to yourself?” My heart tightened with the image of him unconscious from drinking too much.

He readied another shot for himself, and my body was reacting before my mind could catch up. I found myself next to him, my hand on his arm, my eyes on his. “Please don’t.” He watched me closely as I begged him. Standing just below Joshua, I was close enough to see each and every fleck of emotion.

“I’m drinking because of you, Abby. Fuck!” A gasp pierced my lungs as Joshua slammed his shot glass down on the counter with a shocking amount of force. He stood with both arms against the counter, holding his towering frame upright with his head hung low.

I felt trapped as I watched him, both too scared to move and not to move. I wasn’t sure how he would react to either. Joshua was a wild card tonight, and I had no idea what my next play should be. “See?” Joshua’s voice was unusually raspy. “This is why you need to stay away from me.” Joshua continued his volume building with each statement he made. “I will only drag you down with me, make you feel as shitty as I do right now.” Pushing his weight off of the counter, Joshua turned to find me. His gaze landed on mine, heavy with his upset. Confused beyond thought, I had to ask, “What do you mean?”

He shook his head, eyes still gripping mine. Then he slumped his head, tearing apart our connection. But when he brought his head back up, I could see that there was a terribly miserable smile cinching up his lips before he spoke. “I will ruin you, Abby, can’t you see that?” His eyelids drooped halfway down his eyes. “Get far away from me while you can, I’m not good for you and I’m not worth a damn anyway.”

“Don’t say that, you are worth something to me anyway.” Joshua’s mouth squished together in thought, his eyes turning suspect. “Only because you’re nice. You’re so so nice, Abby. Sometimes you’re too nice when you should be tougher.” Following his train of thoughts right now was maddening. “Sometimes I think about you and wonder if you’re only nice to me because you know Shannon isn’t.”

“So this is about Shannon?” Maybe we were finally getting somewhere. Joshua shook his head, pinching his fingers together over the straight bridge of his nose. “No, no! This is about you. You and me.” “Okay?” “Exactly!” Joshua exploded. “It is okay. It’s more than okay! It’s fucking wonderful!” “Okay, so what’s your problem then?” I asked, my voice rising with my frustrations. I assumed Joshua had reached his peak. I assumed he’d gotten as angry and as belligerent as he was going to get. I had assumed wrong. “My problem is that I’m not happy!” Joshua shouted, a blazing fire in his stare. “My problem is that I’m lying to myself constantly, telling myself that I’m happy when I’m fucking not.”

“Joshua…” “My problem is that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since you got here.” My heart stilled. Joshua’s eyes sharpened on mine, and he stepped closer. “My problem is that you’re so goddamn perfect that you’re ruining everything.” Joshua continued towards me, determination in his calculated steps and sins running through his eyes. Sins that spoke directly to my wildly beating heart as Joshua got closer and shook my entire foundation. He didn’t know what he was saying. He couldn’t have. I tried feebly to put back that space between us that Joshua had taken away, stepping backward until my heels hit a wall. I had nowhere else to go. My back was against the wall both literally and figuratively, and Joshua took full advantage of that.

Thoughts raced back and forth and around and around until they collapsed against my brain, overwhelmed to the point of mindlessness as Joshua closed in and raised his arms up over me and placed them against the wall. He had trapped me using his own body. “My problem,” Joshua said, his breath kissing my lips. “Is I want you, and I can’t have you.”

My ears heard him say it, but my brain refused to believe it. There was a misunderstanding somewhere along with this conversation on my part. There just had to be. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” I breathed. “But I do.” Like he was trying to prove his point, he let the heat of his words wash across my lips, watching me grow heady on the aroma of him. “I didn’t mean that I had to drink tonight because of you.” Joshua’s words fell from his lips slowly, like the most skillful seduction I’d ever been a part of. “I meant that I had to drink so I could stop thinking about you.”

“I can’t stand the thought of anyone else touching you or being the one to make you blush so easily as you do with me.” The dance his gaze was doing across my face came to a standstill on my mouth. My heart felt like it was trying to kill me by how hard and how violently it was thudding at that moment. The pain centered in my chest only deepened as the hands that were once above my head on the wall, cupped the sides of my face.

It was then that Joshua brushed his thumb across the expanse of my bottom lip like he was touching something precious… and any disbelief I held onto up until this point shattered. Oh my God. Both my breathing and willpower stumbled as he thumbed my bottom lip again, caressing it with a tenderness I’d never felt from another person. “I… hate myself for the thoughts that I have,” he whispered gently, not once stopping his attention to my lips. “I hate myself for what I’m thinking right now.”

“What are you thinking?” I asked, my voice a wisp of a breath, but I didn’t care. I wanted to know. I needed to know what he was thinking right now. “I love that you want to know.” A cold front swept across my lips as Joshua removed his touch, and I felt like crying to have it back. Instead, the backs of his knuckles laid against my neck, dragging down my skin so slowly, so sweetly, my eyes nearly fell shut with the feeling.

“But you’d never look at me the same if I told you what I was thinking.” “You don’t know that.” There’s a lot you don’t know. Joshua surveyed every inch of my face, his perfect lips thinning as he shook his head. “There’s no way you wouldn’t and… that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.” The turmoil in his stare was devastating to witness, and I wished more than anything that I could absorb any hurt he was feeling into myself and take it on as my own.

Seeing and knowing he was in any degree of pain hurt my heart anyway, so why should both of us be in pain when I could take it all on for the both of us? I’d gotten good at living with the pain over the last few months. And now at the root of it, I knew I owed his pain anyway because it was my fault. His pain was my doing. Somewhere, somehow, along the path we followed for our friendship, Joshua had caught the same virus that I had.

Somehow, it happened to us both. The virus infected us, turning our minds and hearts sick while it ate away at us from the inside. “What if I’m willing to take the risk for us?” I asked. A cut of hot breath pushed between his lips, tasting anguish as his head dropped low. “Those are dangerous words.” Eyes smoldering to the point that they should have scorched me, latched onto mine as he looked back up and shook his head.

“You have no idea what you’re asking for, Abby.” “What am I asking for?” Sad humor tinted the edges of his stare as he leaned his head in close. I sucked back a breath and held it in as Joshua rested his warm forehead against mine. This couldn’t be real. This had to be some beautiful chaotic dream and not reality staring down at me through eyes that melted my heart with their aching honesty as he spoke. “I’m relying heavily on the hope that you’ll never figure that out.” “But why?” Joshua hummed through a slight smile, shaking his head against mine. “No more questions. I’m having enough trouble answering them as it is without saying too much.”

“But…, ” I stuttered, hesitant to say the words waiting on my tongue. What if his ‘too much’ was exactly what I wanted to hear? Where did that leave us? Where did that leave Shannon and Robert? Joshua used my hesitation to push the moment along. “But what? Nothing I say tonight will matter in the morning, so why say it at all? They’re fucking useless words.

Anything I want to say tonight…” A breath hitched in my throat as his stare lowered to my lips. “Anything I want to do tonight…” A dangerous part of myself stepped forward into the spotlight, holding my conscience by the neck as Joshua’s hands moved lower. We both watched in total silence as his fingers traced down the top half of my body, traveling over my collarbone and quickening my breaths into labored pants.

His hands were detached from all logic and consequence, and so was my mind. Lust took it hostage and whispered that nothing else mattered past the slow pace of his fingertips as they skimmed down the sides of my breasts. He touched me as he never should have, and all I could do to help myself was gasp his name. “Joshua .” My voice was nearly a moan, and I couldn’t find a reason to care at that point.

His grip around my body tightened, squeezing so firmly that I gasped, and fought not to squirm against him as he ignited a fire through my veins that had a direct path right between my legs. It felt like he was touching all of me when, in reality, I knew he was only holding my waist. It didn’t matter. Joshua’s single touch felt like it consumed my entire body.

I saw him and the dominance carving his features, and I knew I was done for. This was it. He was looking right through me, down to the shameful, deplorable person that I was inside as he saw how much I wanted him. No matter the situation, no matter the sordid morality badge it slapped across my chest, I wanted Joshua and now he knew it.

“I’ve already taken this farther than I should have.” Between my legs ached as his voice became something primal. Those eyes of his dropped to my lips for what must be the thousandth time tonight. “So what’s a little further?” Cheers of happiness met riots of protest inside my head, but I shushed it all to the back of my mind as he inched closer. Joshua was going to kiss me.

And I was going to let him. We’d deal with the consequences later, but tonight, at this moment, he was mine and I was his and there was nothing left in between. I knew I’d hate myself tomorrow. But tonight, I’d love the man who hated himself for reasons I now understood. His lips were so close and I wanted them so badly I could cry. I had this feeling building inside of me, creating these wild expectations that kissing Joshua would be equivalent to touching the stars. And tonight—tonight I wanted to kiss the stars. The scar from his kiss would be permanent, but magnificent to behold.

As Joshua leaned in closer, I thought of nothing but him. My mind was consumed with Joshua’s smile, his laugh, his thieving gaze that stole away a piece of my heart every time it met mine. His eyes had a direct link to my heart, and as he came so close I could see my own weakened gaze reflecting in his, I instinctively knew I’d never get my heart back whole after tonight.

I started to move, but he got me by the hips. A quick maneuver later and he was holding me with my legs wrapping around his waist. He carried me back to the couch and before I knew it he was sitting with me on his lap, and I was now straddling his hips. He settled my weight on him, slinging heavy arms around my waist. Strong arms brought me closer to the heat between his legs, his eyes closing as he rubbed me against him. He was hard and touched his mouth to my tank top. He tossed me on my back and maneuvered me underneath him. He pinned me down, and when he forced his fingers into my hair, guiding me to look up at him, my heart raced. He was so beautiful, shallow breaths releasing from perfect lips. I touched one, and he kissed my finger, his tongue touching the tip. Harsh heat simmered between my legs, Joshua’s hard length pressing into my stomach.

Looking me right in the eyes while he started sliding a hand beneath my skirt. He pushed into my underwear, cupping me.“Is this OK?,” he questioned and I sighed my reply, “yes,” trembling when he slid a finger inside me. He dipped in deep. In and out. In and out, and I rocked my hips up to meet his strokes. He only just had me on the brink of falling apart and just as I’d accepted my fate and willed a connection I never imagined truly possible, those lips that I craved so much it hurt brushed right past mine. A sharp breath sliced through my throat as Joshua hid his face against my own, his cheek hugging mine. His stubble scratched my cheek as his breath kissed my ear instead of my lips. “I’m no good for you Abby,” he whispered in torment, and my heart cracked in two. Then, he pulled away from me like it was an easy thing to do, like pulling away was as simple as cutting a cord connecting us to one another. With our moment snipped and dead, I watched him go, unable to move. Joshua left me and my openly bleeding heart as he turned the corner into the bedroom he shared with Shannon and closed the door.

Seventeen

Can Somebody Say Awkward

Abigail - The next day…

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