Because that was all this could be.
She smiled up at him. “Take me to bed, Shaw.”
Chapter
Eighteen
Shaw’s heartbeat was still thumping hard in his ears as he led Taryn into his bedroom. They’d gone from zero to a hundred since walking through the door, and he hoped their night would continue, but he could tell the second Taryn walked into his room that something had shifted in her. Her brow was slightly furrowed, and she was biting her lip. The buzz of her orgasm had worn off and now she was thinking, thinking, thinking.
On instinct, he walked over to his dresser and pulled out one of his T-shirts. He held it out to her. “It’s a little cold in here. Wanna borrow this while we take a little breather?”
She gave him a grateful look and smiled, some of the pensiveness leaving her face. “Thanks.”
He grabbed a soft pair of sweatpants for himself and watched Taryn tug his old T-shirt over her naked body. Something about seeing her there in his bedroom, bare-legged, mussed from orgasm, and wearing his clothes made him want to freeze-frame the moment. Hold it in his vision longer than time would allow. How had he gotten here? He still wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t wake up from a dream soon.
Taryn glanced up from beneath her lashes, catching him staring. She smiled, and he was happy to see the flirtatious glint back in her eye. “Guess Rivers didn’t hear us. No knock on the door wondering if someone was injured.”
Shaw chuckled and took her hand, leading her to his bed. “No. I doubt he’s even home. He told me he was going out tonight.” He folded back the covers, and she slipped beneath. “But I wouldn’t care if we disturbed him. We were college roommates. I had to listen to his nighttime escapades more than any friend should. He owes me a few.”
She laughed as Shaw climbed into bed next to her. “He’d bring dates over with you in the same room?”
“Nah, not that bad. Athletes got the good dorms. We had a suite that had two small bedrooms and a shared living room. But the walls were thin, and apparently Rivers is a rock star in bed.”
“Ha.” She rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her hand, an amused expression on her face. “That must’ve been awkward. My college roommate just listened to a lot of death metal without headphones and always reeked of pot. I thought that was bad enough.”
Shaw settled back on his pillows, liking the feel of her warmth next to him. “Nah, it wasn’t a big deal. It became sort of a joke between us. I think at first he was testing me.”
“Testing you?”
He frowned. “Yeah, making sure I wasn’t lying about not caring that he was gay. He’d had a shitty roommate situation before me. Guy who wanted the nice suite but turned out to be a serious homophobic douche bag.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Ugh.”
“So yeah, probably testing me at first, but he eventually opened up to me when he realized he could trust me. He’d had a rough go before college. Had come from a small town and was closeted during high school. He was a swimmer, so a student athlete, and all the locker-room situations that go along with that made him feel like he had to hide who he was. He couldn’t be himself.” Shaw looked over at her. “So I figured he’d earned some loud, don’t-have-to-hide-it sex, you know?”
Taryn’s eyes went soft. “You’re good friends to each other. He was very protective of you tonight. He really didn’t want to let me in. Made me work pretty hard for it.”
Something tightened in Shaw’s chest. “He’s the best person I know. No one else stood by me when everything happened. My family didn’t rally together. We fell apart. My so-called friends abandoned me like I was contagious. But Rivers never flinched. He was there for me in a way that pr
obably saved my life. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I’d been left alone during all of that and what followed.”
Taryn frowned and reached out to put her hand on his chest. “It’s everything to have a friend like that.”
Shaw blew out a breath and lifted his arm to gather her in. She settled into the crook of his arm, her hair tickling his chin. He traced his fingers along her arm. “It is. Seems like you have a few of those, too.”
He could feel her smile against him. “I do. Now.”
“Now?” he asked.
“Yeah. The four of us lost touch for over a decade. I think we all needed space away from everything that had happened. Well, they did. I never left Long Acre, so I didn’t get space. But Liv, Rebecca, and Kincaid were there for me right after the shooting when I needed it most. And I think the universe brought us back together now because we were all feeling a little lost in the world. We’re compasses for one another.”
Shaw stared up at the ceiling, her words falling over him like cold rain. He didn’t want to imagine Taryn and her friends running for their lives, his brother turning a gun on them. He didn’t want to picture what she’d been through in losing her sister. He swallowed past the burning in his throat. “How are you lost?”
She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. I didn’t think I was. We all wrote time capsule letters that summer after Long Acre. We dug them back up and read them when we got together for the documentary. My friends all had things in those letters they hadn’t done, paths they hadn’t followed, action plans they could use to improve how they were feeling now. Like Liv changing her career. And Rebecca leaving divorce law and focusing on at-risk youth. But mine…I’d pretty much stuck to what I’d planned. Be a researcher. Find answers. Make it better.”
“But?” he asked when she didn’t continue.
“But have I really? I haven’t made any difference at all yet. And I feel like I’ve been in this holding pattern. Like I put my life up on a shelf so I could get this other stuff done first. I need to get what I set out to do done, but”—she nuzzled closer—“I shouldn’t be in my thirties and in the hospital with chest pains. I shouldn’t have a guy think that I’d sleep with him just to get a charity event locked down.”