Page 14 of Rebel Obsession

It was some other sense that told me he wasn’t okay. “Did something happen?”

“Other than Caleb trying to murder you?”

I trailed my fingers over his skin. “Yeah. Something feels off with you.”

“I’m fine.”

“People who say they’re fine never actually are. Tell me. I’m a good listener.” It was true. I talked a lot, loudly, at a million miles an hour, but I knew how to shut up when I needed to.

He twisted, trying to get comfortable. “I fucked up with Kian.”

I groaned softly. That was not what I wanted to hear. There was something between Kian and Vaughn neither had admitted to, and I’d been quietly rooting for the two of them for weeks. “Seriously? How do you fuck things up in the tiny amount of time between me nearly drowning and you sneaking in here hoping I was sleeping naked?”

He glared at me. “Do you want me to tell you the story or do you want to keep making jokes at my expense? Where are those listening skills you seem so proud of?”

He had a point. “Continue then.”

He let out a heavy sigh. “I always fuck up with him. Now. Back when we were teenagers… I just keep making the same mistakes.”

I tucked my hands into a prayer position and then slid them under my face, giving him my full attention. I knew I was supposed to just be listening, but I couldn’t help asking another question. “What the hell happened with you two?”

His gaze flickered up, somewhere above my head. “So much and not enough all at once.”

“You guys hooked up?”

“What’s your definition of hooking up?” His tone was curious.

“Kissing?”

“Yeah.”

“Hand job?”

Vaughn nodded slowly. It was hard to be sure, but I had a feeling his cheeks might have been pink if I’d been able to see them properly in the low light.

Not caring that I sounded like a fifteen-year-old drilling her bestie for the details of the night she’d lost her virginity, I kept going. “Oral?”

“Do you really want a blow-by-blow description of every sexual thing we did?”

“I very much do.”

He chuckled. “We didn’t have sex.”

I pouted at him. “No peen in ass? No cock sliding into the henhouse? No dick taking the old dirt track…”

He made a face at me. “No. But…”

“You would have?”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I think so. Everything we’d been doing up until that point led in that direction.”

“How old were you?”

He gave a half shrug of his one exposed shoulder. “Started when we were seventeen or eighteen. Though we’d been skirting around each other long before that.”

“Why’d you stop?”

Vaughn’s face clouded over. “I took him to an Edgely party.”

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