My fingers flex beside her knee. “Lavender.”
“It’s okay. We’re okay.” My skin burns where her hand rests. “I needed to know if it would feel the same after all this time.” Her palm slides up, over my collarbone, along the side of my neck. “I wasn’t sure if it was all in my head or not.” And there’s the vulnerability I remember.
I say nothing, do nothing. I need to tell her to stop, but I don’t want to. I want to soak in this feeling, because in a lot of ways, it does feel the same. But it’s also so very, very different, because the innocence of childhood has disappeared, and in its wake are feelings that only existed in the periphery before—a whole different kind of need. A new thing to become addicted to. Obsess over.
Something else I can’t afford to indulge in.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I grind out.
“Oh, I know.” She shifts, and suddenly she straddles my hips, settling over my erection on a low whimper.
Too far. This is way too far. I understand now what everyone was so worried about. What they all feared would happen over time. Because it is happening, right now, and I don’t want to stop it.
Reality hits hard when Lavender leans down, her hair sweeping across my chest, breath washing over my face. She still smells faintly of vodka. There’s a chance she’s half drunk, despite having been asleep for hours. It would make sense. Lavender generally isn’t this bold, at least not the old version of her.
I consider the ramifications of allowing this to happen, whatever this is. Lavender is still in high school. I can’t feasibly date a high school girl, let alone my best friend’s little sister—with whom I already have a tumultuous history.
And that’s just stating the really fucking obvious. There’s also how easy it will be for me to drag her right back down into my pit of hell where she depends on me to make everything okay.
We’re doomed. I’ll ruin her, just like they said I would. I don’t want to shatter someone who’s already cracked.
I take her hands in one of mine, gently—they’re so delicate, so warm, so fucking perfect—and sit up in a rush. “No, Lavender.”
I tip my head back, and her lips connect with my neck. “I can feel you, though,” she whispers against my skin, rolling her hips. “You want me.”
I can’t admit she’s right. I can’t tell her what she wants to hear, because then she’ll be under the false belief that one day, we’ll be able to be together. And we won’t. We can’t. If I break her again, I’ll never survive it. I barely did the first time around. So I do what I must to save her from me.
I slide my free hand into the hair at the nape of her neck and grip. For a moment I just breathe, aware this is the very last time I’ll ever have her like this—close, needy, vulnerable. And I hate myself for being too weak to love her without destroying her.
“I’m nineteen, Lavender. A breeze makes me hard. You show up in my room in the middle of the night, half-undressed, and climb into my lap. All I need is some friction, doesn’t matter who it’s from.”
She stiffens and tries to free her wrists. “You came to my room first.”
She’s right, but I won’t admit it. I drop my mouth to her ear. “What did you think would happen when you came in here? Did you think I would kiss you? Touch you?”
She flinches. “Kodiak, please.”
I drag the end of my nose along her cheek, loathing myself for this, and hating even more that I’m still hard. “Is that a yes, then?”
She swallows thickly. I can feel her throat working, trying to form sounds. Nausea rolls through me as I stroke down the side of her neck with my thumb. Her skin is damp, pulse thrumming violently.
“Shhhh,” I soothe and press my lips to her temple. I breathe her in, the sweet scent of her skin, her shampoo, her fucking fear, steeling myself for what I’m about to do. “Did you think we would be something to each other after all these years?”
She makes a choked sound, and I release her wrists so I can cup her face in my palms. Everything about the way I’m touching her is a contradiction to my words—tender versus cutting. She tries to turn her head away, but I hold her firmly. Her nightshirt rides perilously high on her thighs. She smells like a grown-up version of the girl I once loved, like lavender shampoo and desire.
And suddenly I’m angry—so full of rage that she still has this kind of power over me and doesn’t even know it. I’m pissed because I’ll never have the control I so desperately need to be good for her. “Look at me, Lavender.”