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“Why do you want to know?” I asked, meeting his dark stare. So dark in the unlit room they were nearly black. Black and endless, and I was drawn to them like a moth to the flame. “Jealous?” I offered the word easily, as if it didn’t matter if he was or not, but it did. It did matter. If he was jealous, it meant he cared, even if it was just because I reminded him of Sabrina.
Declan opened his mouth, but he stopped himself from saying whatever he was about to say. Was he seconds from admitting he was jealous? I wished he’d just say it. Instead, his grip on me loosened, and he sighed. “Do you want to see what I was doing?” he hedged, one of his fingers delicately tracing a line over and over at the base of my shirt. A gesture that would be meaningless between two people who were dating—but between us? I wasn’t sure what it meant, or if he knew he was doing it.
I gave him a nod, and he helped me to spin the other way on his lap. As I moved along, as Declan tucked both of our legs under the desk, I pretended to not notice the gentle hardness beginning to form under my butt. If neither of us addressed it, it didn’t exist, right? That’s how the whole tree falling in the forest but no one was around to hear it, so did it make a sound? thing worked, right?
Eh. Maybe not. A tree falling was nowhere near as deliberate as an erection.
Declan kept one arm wrapped around my waist, his other moving for his laptop. He hesitated before opening the screen up. “Promise you won’t freak out?” he questioned, his breath hot on the back of my neck.
Again, all I could feel was his breath and his dick. I should really get off his lap before this escalates…
But all I did was say, “I promise.”
Declan opened up his laptop, and the screen turned on, showing me just what he’d been doing when I walked in. I would’ve fallen back into him if my back wasn’t already leaning on his chest and he didn’t have an arm around me.
My eyes scanned the page, recognizing it all, and yet I still found the words to say, “What?”
Okay, not words. Word. One word, because that’s all I could get out.
It was one of the many social media giants there were, a page I knew well, mostly because it was full of pictures and posts from me. It was my page, and it looked like Declan was pretty far down it.
“Me?” I asked, turning my head to look at him and finding that he’d been watching me, waiting for me to freak out. This was…a bit on the creepy side, but I’d had worse. I’d had a lot worse than someone stalking me online. “Why were you looking me up? You know you can ask me anything, and I’ll tell you.” I was an open book, pretty much, which was why this whole thing stunned me.
That, and his arm still being around me. That was surprising, too.
Declan bit his lower lip. It was a strangely alluring gesture, and I had momentary thoughts of wanting to be the one to bite that lip, but I shot down those thoughts as quickly as they arrived. No kissing Declan, regardless of how cute he was.
“I missed you,” he said.
He…he missed me? I mean, yes, tonight was the first night I’d been away from the dorm room since that stupid party, but to go so far as to miss me? I didn’t think Declan had it in him. Missing explicitly meant he cared, that he’d rather have me here with him instead of anywhere else.
“Why?” I asked, my voice a whisper. I could not speak any louder than a whisper right now, not when we were so close, not when I felt his hand on my side inching its way up. If Declan was trying to cop a feel, I’d be flabbergasted.
And I’d probably let him get a good one in before I got mad.
“You’re my friend,” he told me.
I wasn’t sure why, but hearing that made me so fucking happy. So happy I could scream.
“You’re my friend, and I care about you,” Declan went on. “You’re the first person who’s wanted to be close to me since…” He closed his eyes, and I saw his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Since Sabrina. I kept picturing you going off with Sawyer, forgetting all about me—”
My breath was swept from my lungs when he held me closer, turning me away from the desk and towards him. His arms surrounded me once again in a hug I could not escape.
“—and I couldn’t imagine losing you.” He pressed his nose into my hair, near my ear, breathing in deeply. I could feel his lungs rise against my chest, could feel the still-present erection beneath me. This wasn’t a position friends took with each other, not at all.
“You’re not going to lose me,” I whispered, too tight against his chest to hug him back. I ignored the growing warmth in my lower core, the urge I had to tilt his face just a bit and smother his mouth with my own.
Then Declan said something that made me stop and think: “Promise?”
He made me promise not to freak out over what he was looking up, which, okay, fine. Easy enough. But a promise like this? It was worlds different; it meant more than promising not to get freaked out. Promising I wouldn’t leave him, that he wouldn’t lose me…it wasn’t something I could entirely do. Sometimes life happened. Sometimes life took you by surprise and forced things on you that you never expected.
Like what happened with Sabrina.
This time, this particular promise, I wasn’t sure I could make. I didn’t want to lie to Declan, didn’t want to tell him it would all be okay when it wouldn’t be. I was a fan of the truth, no matter how difficult it was to hear.
I knew I shouldn’t promise him anything, but I found myself murmuring softly, “I promise. You won’t lose me. I’m not going to leave you.” Was I telling the truth? At the time, yes, but who’s to say what would be true at the end of the school year? We wouldn’t be roommates the entire time at Hillcrest. We wouldn’t have time like this.
We remained like that for quite a while, and I could’ve sworn I heard Declan mutter something along the lines of “You’re all I have.” I let it be, knowing he needed this right now. I wasn’t about to break his spirit, which he so recently got back. I wouldn’t tell him that I was just a normal girl, unworthy of all of this attention.
